Althouse: "Subsurface insanity."

November 17, 2012

"Subsurface insanity."

In Tokyo.

14 comments:

effinayright said...: I used to travel to Tokyo frequently. I hardly ever had to take the subway during rush hour, but I can say the 2 1/2 hour stop-and-start bus ride from Narita airport to the city after a 14-hour flight was a real pain.

Not to mention the time the police found the limo of the deranged idiot who released sarin gas into the subways in the underground garage of my hotel--while I was staying there.; 11/17/12, 2:47 PM
Alex said...: Looks like the cattle cars on the way to the extermination camp.; 11/17/12, 2:52 PM
McTriumph said...: This is old news, it's your future, a scientific society, FORWARD!; 11/17/12, 3:37 PM
William said...: Perhaps this explains the weird Japanese fetish of being molested by tentacled monsters.; 11/17/12, 3:40 PM
Alex said...: This is a liberal wetdream. Herd us all into a huge megalopolis like cattle.; 11/17/12, 4:42 PM
tim maguire said...: Given Japanese birthrates, just wait a bit. Seats will open up.; 11/17/12, 5:51 PM
Dante said...: Imagine that these people continued to take the subway even after the sarin gas release.; 11/17/12, 8:17 PM
Emil Blatz said...: Breath very bad. Oh, so stinky!; 11/17/12, 8:48 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: I've traveled to Tokyo numerous times and never saw trains *that* crowded, even in the commuter stations at rush hour. People do sleep on trains a lot and lean on the windows, yes.; 11/17/12, 9:35 PM
MayBee said...: It can get really scary. Especially if you have a little kid with you. You had to pick the child up or they'd just be surrounded with adult bodies cutting off their airspace.; 11/18/12, 2:08 AM
Balfegor said...: Re: Wholelottasplainin:

I used to travel to Tokyo frequently. I hardly ever had to take the subway during rush hour, but I can say the 2 1/2 hour stop-and-start bus ride from Narita airport to the city after a 14-hour flight was a real pain.

That's why most business travellers take the Narita Express nowadays. I think I've taken the limousine bus once -- every other time it's NEX, and it's great. Getting off in Tokyo station is not so great, though, because Tokyo station is almost as bad as New York Penn Station, and 10 times as large. Shinagawa station is nicer to navigate.

Re: the subway, when I interned in Tokyo years ago I had to take it every day, and it was packed. Not this bad, but I can imagine this happening sometimes. And that would be unpleasant (for the other passengers, not for me, since I'd fall on the high end of Japanese size-distributions). On the other hand, I'd still prefer it to commuting in New York, in part because the smell is just much worse in NYC. Extra personal space doesn't count for all that much when the gaps are all filled with stink. Rush hour in Tokyo is also made more manageable by the fact that people queue to get on (difficult to get off sometimes, though).

Would be pretty awful if one were a girl, though. In some stations the walls are plastered with posters reminding everyone that sexual harassment is a crime. And during rush hour, there are women-only cars on some (maybe all?) lines.; 11/18/12, 2:56 AM
Robert Cook said...: "This is a liberal wetdream. Herd us all into a huge megalopolis like cattle."

Alex, do say shit just to say shit?; 11/18/12, 6:01 PM
Alex said...: Cook - you deny what I said is true? Look at how the left disparages "flyover country".; 11/18/12, 6:04 PM
Robert Cook said...: Alex, your statement is so nonsensical it doesn't even warrant a denial...it deserves only ridicule.

It's delusional!

It's as ridiculous as if I'd said something as stupid as "all conservatives want to empty the cities and force everyone to live on farms and go to church everyday."; 11/18/12, 6:25 PM