Rush hour subway

If you’ve ever visited Japan, this will look very familiar. Even at the height of rush hour in the busiest station, everyone is orderly and quiet. The rules are: stand to the left on the escalator, walk on the right. No pushing or crowding, only proper queueing.

Here’s another example. The right side is more crowded and only divided by lines taped to the ground, and in anywhere but Japan, people would very likely start expanding into the left side. Technically that would be more efficient in the short-term, but once the orderliness breaks down, you end up getting bottlenecking, which is less efficient long-term. What’s amazing to me is Japanese rule-following transcends directives from authority with associated punishments, which is what most of the rest of the world is at. I know that if I stand on the right side of the escalator or cross the lines on the ground I won’t get fined or deported. Yes, some part of me is terrified of “messing up” as a foreigner, but the other part of me wants to follow these rules because it makes a better commuting experience for everyone if everyone participating in it follows the rules. Basically, Japan has solved the prisoner’s dilemma - they opt for the slightly less selfish action assuming that everyone around them does so too, making the optimal group-wide decision. And I don’t think this could’ve been executed nearly as well if the community-based rules/thought processes were say, mandated by the government rather than socialized as a fundamental aspect of the culture itself. This also makes sense why Japanese people hate foreigners. If you don’t have the group-think mindset, you become a huge disturbance to the natural flow of life.

One more for you - people stand to the side to allow people in the cars to get off before getting on. Pretty much every time I take public transit in the US I think about this and how it’s so annoying to get blocked from getting off the bus/subway. Like, dude, I’m trying to help you get on by making more room, please let me off!

Alright, my days are getting more compressed as the tasks start piling up, so I’ll keep the rest pretty brief.

Did an extremely touristy thing and ate a souffle pancake at A Happy Pancake because I didn’t get a chance to my past 2 visits. Very touristy, it was good but I think overhyped. 7.5/10

You’re going to see a theme today which is that I am not tilting my head down enough to take pictures with my Meta glasses. Another area of improvement for me.

For lunch I ate “Oil Soba”, or Abura soba (油そば). (I guess the restaurant was called Kasugatei, didn’t even know until this moment.) One of the few times being able to read Kanji meanings (from Chinese) and pronounce Hiragana but not knowing any Japanese otherwise was actually useful, except for the fact that I didn’t read the restaurant signs at all because it just had a big 油 (oil) in the front and I had no idea what that meant in terms of food.

Believe me, it looked good, if only I actually got a picture of the food

Smoky pork belly on top of thick, curly ramen noodles (no broth). They torch every bowl with a flamethrower (again, I attempted to get a photo but failed. It’s hard when you can’t see the photos as you’re taking them…). So oily and made me feel like crap but really delicious. 8.5/10

Korean BBQ at KollaBo for dinner. Well, I guess making these daily posts about what I ate is pretty helpful - it’s no puzzle why I haven’t been losing weight.

It was tasty, but very pricey and they charged for banchan and didn’t give free refills. I don’t know if that’s standard in Japan but I don’t like it. 7/10 for food, 5/10 for cost.