Live In Japan

女性専用乗車

Women-only carriages on Japan’s subway and urban rail routes have become the norm in recent years.

Set up to counter the growing menace of male perverts (known as chikan) groping women in packed commuter trains, many railway companies operate women-only carriages on morning and evening rush-hour services.

Tokyo’s subway introduced women-only carriages in 2005 and now has women-only carriages for the morning rush-hour on the Chiyoda, Fukutoshin (Yurakucho New Line), Hanzomon, Hibiya, Tozai and Yurakucho Lines. Nagoya followed suit in 2007 with a women-only carriage on weekday mornings on the busy Higashiyama Line in to Nagoya Station and extended the practice for evening trains this year.

The Keio Line in Tokyo was the first railway company to introduce special carriages for women back in 2000. It is estimated that over 60% of Japanese women travelers in their 20s and 30s have experienced some sort of harassment on public transport in Japan.

The idea has caught on in other countries and there are now gender specific carriages in Brazil, Egypt, India, Moscow and Taiwan.

Look out for the (usually pink) signs on station platforms.

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宮本 武蔵

Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), the legedendary Japanese swordsman and author of The Book of Five Rings fought one of his most famous duels in Kyoto near the Shisendo Temple in the north east of Kyoto.

The area now known as Ichijoji-sagarimatsu-cho has a stone memorial to the duel and the Hachidai Shrine, next door to Shisendo, has a statue of Miyamoto Musashi.

Supposedly Musashi challenged the head of the Yoshioka School of swordsmanship and after defeating him and his brother in Kyoto in separate duels was to fight the young heir to the school, Yoshioka Matashichiro, at the “spreading pine” (sagarimatsu) in Ichijoji. Taking no chances the boy turned up with a small force to ambush Musashi, but the master swordsman, killed the young Yoshioka and a number of the men sent to ambush him and escaped.

Musashi continued his life as a wandering swordsman before retiring to write The Book of Five Rings and to paint.

To get to Hachidai Shrine take a number #5 bus to Ichijoji-sagarimatsu-cho from Kyoto Station and walk up the hill or take an Eiden train from Demachi Yanagi Station to Ichijoji and walk east.

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マンホールの蓋

Enjoy these manhole covers from Shimane and Hiroshima Prefecture. Japanese manhole covers often present the main attractions and characteristics of their localities. Thus the Miyajima manhole in Hiroshima portrays the maple leaf the picturesque island is famous for. Masuda is on the Japan Sea coast and is known for its fish and fishing port.

Japanese manhole covers are a unique form of street design and definitely worth keeping your eyes to the ground for.

If you have a manhole cover shot and wish to show it on this blog please contact us if you’d like us to display it.

Manhole Covers in Japan

More Manhole Covers - Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Shimane, Hiroshima

Images by Jake Davies

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From Live in Japan Source

The full kanji version 皮膚 (skin) has a second kanji that is no longer in the official list of 2000 or so that are learnt at school, so it is often written 皮フ outside doctor’s etc. Why they don’t just have done with it and switch to all katakana or hiragana I’m not sure.I think […]

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形容詞 副詞

Ureshii, kanashii, natsukashii, samishii, okashii, tanoshii – these are all common adjectives in Japanese and mean happy (ureshii), sad (kanashii), nostalgic (natsukashii), lonely (samishii), funny/odd/peculiar (okashii), fun (tanoshii).

The way Japanese adjectives work is, like most of the language, very, very regular. As you can see, all the adjectives above end with “shii”. Not all adjectives end in “shii”, but they do all end with an “i”.

To express the way you feel in Japanese, all you need is the adjective. Words corresponding to “I” and “feel” are unnecessary. Simply saying the word “ureshii” means “I am happy,” or “kanashii”: “I am sad”.

How about doing something, for example, “happily” or “sadly,” i.e. forming the adverb? That’s easy, too.

Simply replace the final “i” with “ku”. Thus to sing happily is “ureshiku utau,” or to laugh happily is “ureshiku warau.” To sing sadly is “kanashiku utau,” or to laugh sadly is “kanashiku warau.” To sing nostalgically, “natsukashiku utau,” or to laugh nostalgically (if there is such a thing?!) is “natsukashiku warau”.

Learning the five adjectives listed here today will get you a fair way to expressing how you feel in Japanese. Tanoshiku benkyo shiyo! (Have fun studying!)

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We’re selling a few items to make more room in our place. Please contact me via e-mail if you’re interested. items are below. Thanks!!

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A real question this one, although strangely from a Japanese friend of a friend…This is never popular in any country, because it takes away some of your boss’s status. The additional element in Japan is that managers and prospective managers are being judged overwhelmingly on their ability to keep the peace, so any indication like […]

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家でやろう

The “Do It At Home” campaign is continuing on the Tokyo subway. Previously the posters featured a young woman applying her make up on the trains. Now a new series of posters features the same woman in a polyptych talking on her mobile phone watched over by a sinister male figure wearing spectacles.

Is the man a chikan pervert or does he represent the long-suffering, law abiding Tokyo commuter? Why is the disapproving figure a man not a woman? Is the poster sexist or misogynist? I am no psychologist but there are layers of hidden meaning in this poster.

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I discovered recently that some only do it when you push the button for blind people by mistake, but I don’t think that covers all of them. Any theories?

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I was playing my Kanji Kentei 2 DS game (great review on Naruhodo) the other day and noticed this interesting sentence while being tested on how to write the Kanji 罪 (tsumi).罪を憎んで人を憎まず。(tsumi wo nikunde hito wo nikumazu)It translates to, “hate the sin, not the sinner.”「罪」I love it when proverbs match up.- Harvey

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