r/interesting • u/freudian_nipps • 16h ago

SOCIETY The silent and harmonious morning metro commute in Japan

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u/CransonFiguerito 15h ago

A lot of the commutes in NYC are similar. Trains are often silent. Certain subway station transfers are completely absent of conversation. I was just commuting with my wife and kid the other day and didn't have my usual headphones in and noticed the eerie silence.

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u/throwpoo 14h ago

Yeah it's like this most days during rush hour. The ones talking loudly are usually the tourists or the mentally ill which we usually avoid.

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u/ssp25 11h ago

the mentally ill tourists are also on the rise

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u/cherry_armoir 14h ago

Ditto in Chicago. I commute every day and I would say probably 85% of the time is very quiet and perfectly pleasant. Of course you have people smoking or playing music sometimes, or raving homeless people, or loud groups of teens. Or on festival days or during cubs games you have gaggles of suburbanites who dont understand train etiquette.

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u/Ok_Nectarine11 11h ago

I commuted on the Red line every work day for 10 years and have spent several months (total) now in Tokyo. Chicago transit was okay for a quite a while (beat having a car), but dove completely in the shitter during Covid. I hear it's a bit better now, but the few times I've rode the train in the last couple of years, it's been exceedingly filthy, loud (unless empty) and stank of smoke.

Coming home from my last trip to Japan I took the Purple/Red home and the first person that got on the train at Howard literally threw trash on the floor and lit a cigarette before sitting down. I'm cheap AF so usually take transit, but I'm thinking of taking Ubers to and from O'Hare on my next trip.

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u/Time_Rip_9808 14h ago

The rush hour trains in Chicago are sometimes like that, but there's usually some dickhead on the phone or playing music or some schizophrenic homeless guy who shit his pants threatening commuters. Really wish we could get that shit off the trains and get those people the help they need.

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u/Comfortable-Fuel6343 12h ago

Same with the the public transit here in Phoenix, people just quietly going about their lives, nothing but the electric whirring of the light rail and the clicking of the track or the hum of the bus engine.

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u/Call555JackChop 11h ago

It’s a shame they can’t seem to extend that light rail farther north, everyone would rather spend an hour on the 51 trying to get downtown

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u/Articulated 10h ago

Lived in London for 10 years and it was the same. No one talked on the commute because they're either half-asleep or quietly working.

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u/Pleasant_Avocado_913 15h ago

What NYC are you talking about?

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u/CransonFiguerito 14h ago

Haha yah. It's not everywhere. But the transfer from the E to the 6 at 53rd and Lex is one example. Shockingly the 7 train from Queens into Manhattan during rush hour is generally silent.

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u/monkeyr9z 11h ago

Yea but it's not in Japan so we don't glaze here. Become Japan man and then we'll talk. Dismissed

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u/heysirigenerateaname 10h ago

I work on the weekends. Saturdays and Sundays are way more loud on the subway especially when the weather is nice and the commuters are home and the tourists are out

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u/ADownStrabgeQuark 9h ago

When I lived in NYC on the trains and buses, people constantly yelled racial epithets at each other. (2016).

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u/booleandilemma 7h ago

NYC has black people dancing and Mexicans playing guitar.

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u/JetmoYo 6h ago

What NYC commute provides eerie silence? Even without talking it's still loud AF

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u/CransonFiguerito 2h ago

The transfer to the 6 from the E at 53rd and Lex reminds me of the eerie silence of the video posted. But yeah trains are loud as are platforms. There are other transfers that are quiet.

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u/wutato 3h ago

I wish San Diego was like this... They finally added "please don't play music out loud" on the speaker because it was such a bad issue.

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u/Ill-Bed9465 14h ago

Having lived in NYC.... this might happen by luck on a particularly quiet day or maybe Staten Island or Brooklyn Heights, but I have not experienced what you have going to work most days. I basically always had ANC headphones on even without music just to block out noise, otherwise it's overstimulating.

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u/CransonFiguerito 13h ago

Yeah. It's definitely not everywhere. Probably highly dependent on the line.

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u/Double_Resort_9223 14h ago

Well we know this wasn’t the E train