Volume 14　東京の電車って快適！


Train Trips in Japan

Michael Rhys: Hello everyone. Welcome to the August edition of Cultural Crossroads. I'm Mike.

Ann Slater: And I'm Ann.  

Michael: Thanks for joining us today. And today we're gonna be talking about transportation. So Ann, do you take the train a lot?

Ann: I do. I do. I often take the train, the bus, or I ride my bike, or I walk. I don't drive a car in Tokyo actually. How about you?

Michael: Well I do drive. Um, and I drive maybe two or three times a week. But for the most part I do take the trains. They're great. They're, uh, convenient, and they're punctual, there's many of them, and they're 6relatively cheap.

Ann: Yeah, it's a wonderful system. It's a wonderful system. I'm always amazed. When I go to other cities, it makes you realize even more how convenient Tokyo's transportation system is and how quickly you can get very long distances in a very short time.

Michael: Absolutely. If I compare it to London - I love London and I've got a lot of affection for the underground system, uh, the tube system in London, but, you know, it's old. It's the oldest tube system in the world. Uh, it's dirty, it's unreliable, it's tiny as well.

Ann: Unreliable, you mean the trains are late or . . .?

Michael: The trains are . . . well, unreliable in the sense of a lot of the time they're not actually running.

Ann: Oh.

Michael: Almost guaranteed every day there'll be some line that has closed down because of a, usually a signal failure somewhere on the line.

Ann: Uh-huh.

Michael: But you get used to it. It's just part of life in London. So that's part of the charm in a way, but if you compare it with Tokyo's wonderful and clean and big trains, there is no comparison. 

Ann: I'm always amazed too how comfortable the trains are in Tokyo. For example in the winter it's so nicely heated.

Michael: Right.

Ann: And it's so comfortable and then I hate to get off, onto the cold platform. And in the summer with the shades pulled down and the wonderful air conditioning on it's so calm and cool. It's really, it's remarkably comfortable in that way.

Michael: It is indeed. And actually, interestingly here, the tube trains in London, the underground trains, don't have air conditioning.

Ann: Oh.

Michael: And from this year I think they're actually starting to put air conditioning in. And this is like over a hundred and something, thirty years, they've been running the tube system.

Ann: Now is there anything that you don't like about the trains in Tokyo?

Michael: Well I must admit there are . . . sometimes the behavior of some people on the trains can get a little bit irritating I suppose.

Ann: Uh-huh.

Michael: There is a tendency for people to get on the train and then stop.

Ann: As soon as they're on, ha-ha.

Michael: As soon as they're on the train, like they just get on and they stop no matter how many people are behind. You end up having to squeeze your way pa-through and that kind of irritates me a little bit.

Ann: I also find, uh, I hate when you're trying to get off and people rush on before you've gotten off. 

Michael: Oh yes.

Ann: So you have to elbow your way off the train.

Michael: Definitely yes, that's another thing.