I experienced many culture shocks while living abroad in Japan for 6 months. Things like lining up for trains and stores, especially restaurants, may seem mundane, but it was a noticeable change. I normally don’t line up and wait for the line to move on to get a seat. I normally would leave if the line was too long or I didn’t feel like waiting. I realized that it is very common in Japan to line up and join a queue. I noticed this while walking around Ikebukuro; many stores, on days off, like Sunday, often have a line out the door. This change took some time to get used to as the train system was new to me, and I needed to find where the train queue started, but I soon got the hang of it. However, I still prefer to not wait in line for restaurants and am more likely to not join the queue unless I really want to eat at the place.
On the topic of trains, the number of people on the trains sometimes is unreal. When I first experienced a rush hour train, I thought, “There has to be a maximum capacity at some point”. There wasn’t. As we kept getting pushed more and more onto the train, the more crowded it got until the last person in the queue was in. You can imagine being back-to-back with one person while being shoulder-to-shoulder with two others while holding your backpack in front of you and not being able to reach your phone in your pocket because you could accidentally jab someone with your elbow. Luckily, there is a way to avoid this uncomfortable experience, but it requires getting up even earlier than normal. I would be able to avoid the rush hour trains if I get to the train station by 7am. Which, most of the time, didn’t happen….
Rush hour starts from as early as 7am to 10am, but the worst of it is around 8am to 9am, which is when the term 『すしずめ』comes into play. This term is pronounced as “su-shi-zu-me” and means to be packed as sushi when seen in sushi takeout boxes. Synonyms are “jam packed” and “over-crowded”. This is the perfect way to describe the rush hour train, and after consulting my Japanese peers, I confirmed that I’m not alone in this dislike of the rush hour train.
Sometimes, while using the trains to central areas such as Yamanote Line and Marunouchi Line, the trains are packed full of people back to back and shoulder to shoulder even out side of rush hour. These lines are often boarded by tourists coming from the airport and traveling to the main cities like Shibuya, Shinjuku, Asakusa, Ginza, Ikebukuro, etc. There is also the nighttime rush hour period, though I didn’t have much conflict with this time frame. I faced the morning rush hour every day while on my way to class. On my way home, I was free to come back whenever I wanted, so I tended to miss the afternoon rush hour. To the right is an unusual image of a completely empty train, something that I’ve ever only experienced once or twice. You can imagine this train car would normally be completely filled up with people from the front to the back of it.
I wanted to note there are some particular rules when it comes to train etiquette, but I’ll save it for part 2.
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