Trains in Japan are never late...or so the Legend goes...

The most efficient country in the world, the trains are always on time, the service is perfect...This is certainly the idea that we, Westerners, in particular Italians, have regarding Japan.

The good/bad thing about being an Italian abroad, with a history as a commuter on the Milan-Genoa route, is that we have our own concept of delay, which we take completely for granted. Under 5/10 minutes it cannot even be defined as a delay, it is simply the time that the train needs to slow down and restart; it's part of the system.

Japan makes you completely change this concept for you. After a year, I began to get nervous about delays of just 30 seconds which rarely happened (patience is not one of my inner qualities). The best-known cases of train delays in Japan are catastrophic events such as typhoons and earthquakes; or during Japanese festivals where tons of ​​people flood the streets and consequently slow down the entry and exit service of passengers. (Yes, if you have never been to Japan, or Asia, it is difficult to have an idea of ​​the amount of people that can stay in the same place at one time; but, I assure you, it is crazy).

The transport service is so efficient that if you leave on time, you will be able to get on your train at the usual time, and make as many connections as you want within a minute without any problems. Once, I managed to catch a train connection at the airport coming home from Sapporo (Northern Japan) by plane, landing at Kansai Airport in Osaka. It was an 18 minute walk to that train (it was late evening, long journey), I landed on perfect time and boarded the train. I still find it hard to believe, but it happened.

It was a Wednesday evening, about to leave work at Universal, when my colleague told me to take it easy because the trains were late and that we could walk back together without rushing.

After she told me this I thought of a serious accident, or at least a considerable delay... I pictured myself in front of the billboards in Pavia with those 60 minutes delays that make you fall to the ground, but when I arrived at the station I saw this:

4 minutes, barely. It made me laugh a lot.

But for a station like Osaka Umeda, 4 minutes is a long, long time. The trains travel in both directions every 2 minutes, it would not be correct to say that they break the minute, they break the second. 4 minutes late means people missed two trains and the number of people on the platform has more than doubled. A sea of ​​people that would create chaos everywhere, but not here.

In Japan there is something even more efficient than the transportation system: people.

Nobody pushes, everyone is perfectly lined up. The closest ones will get on the first incoming train; the others, on the next one. Easy.

With a delay like that you are justified if you enter the workplace late. Oh yes, because it is not necessary to leave half an hour early, taking into account the usual delay, to arrive on time. If you start at 9, walking from the station to the workplace takes 8 minutes, the train which arrives at 8.52 is the right one to catch.

It wasn't the first time this happened to me, but my colleague's words about this "delay" made me laugh a lot.

The first time I was in Kyoto, it was late at night and I was returning home when this message appeared on the billboard:

I was ready to go and buy something while I was waiting, but again it was a couple (2-3) minutes delay. Efficiency brings a bit of exaggeration sometimes.

But has considerable delays never happened, for real? Yes, it happens. For an ultra-efficient and rigorous systems, in the event of an accident, it's way harder to restart quickly.

Systems accustomed to managing many inconveniences (like Italy) have great flexibility and greater reaction capacity. What does this mean?

I'll give you another fact. 24 seconds. The average annual delay of fast trains (Shinkansen - bullet trains) across the country. I mean, will it ever be possible to sit on the floor for 7 hours in one of these excellent trains on the way back from Tokyo to Kyoto due to an accident?

Yes, two, three times a year it happens and I couldn't miss this experience.

The reason?

Typhoon. Which translated into Italian is called "heavy" rain. 7 hours sitting on the floor (vacant seats are not bookable in advance) without any communication about what was happening. I felt a bit at home, that time.

Marco