Why are you coughing all over the place!?

No, seriously, why!?

Oh man is this one timely. Pollen levels are high and colds are still going around and people are sneezing and coughing and spluttering all over the place. The woman next to me on the train tonight coughed right on my hand (I was holding my phone at face level) just as I was getting out. She'd been coughing discreetly along the way, but this time I felt the full blast on my skin. I turned and gave her a germy look. Then I immediately felt bad about it. Then I remembered that she had just coughed on me. No mercy! If Wronged Bear isn't putting up with it, neither am I. (Hm, am I learning the right lesson from these posters?)

What's with the trash!?

"Why is there trash here? The train is not a garbage can."

I was out of the country at the beginning of the month when the posters changed. (I'm squeaking it in here under the wire for the Tokyo Metro manners posters completists out there!) You do see the occasional bottle or wrapper on the trains in Tokyo. On the whole, though, Japanese public spaces have a few orders of magnitude less litter and grime than comparable public spaces in US cities. It's weird, getting back to the states; until your eyes adjust, you see little problems everywhere that seem easily fixed. "Why don't they repave those dangerous potholes!?" you think. "Why hasn't this paint been touched up in the last 20 years!? Who let the shelves at the grocery store get so untidy!?" And, "Oh my god you have got to be kidding me, why is the cashier waving around the wine chiller she's ringing up for me and shouting at the woman at the next register that she would like one of these for her birthday which is in three weeks and none of y'all better forget!?"
After a few days, though, questions like "Why is there trash here!?" start to seem pointless, and you stop noticing the blemishes. Until, that is, you get back to Tokyo and a piece of garbage out of place seems noteworthy again.
If history is any guide, December's poster will be about public drunkenness. Check back soon!

Why won't you let me out!?

I can't get off the train when others are standing in front of the door.

One of the things that makes visitors ooh and ah about how orderly Japan is is the train system. Rather, the way people use the train system. Japanese commuters form lines on the platform like iron shavings form lines over a magnetic grid. It is a tacit nod to the laws of physics, an acceptance that they cannot occupy the same space as the people who will inevitably spill out of the train when it stops. Unlike some (all) of the other cities we could name, the people waiting for trains in Tokyo keep clear a path for the people exiting the train. Once these same model citizens get on the train, though, they join the rest of the world in the belief that the inside of a train car is a magical space where the laws of physics are suspended. Once they are planted in front of the door, there they take root until they get out at their own stop. Sometimes they sway slightly out of the way like stalks of kelp; sometimes they stand firm. And it is a little enraging. Some of the kindest people I know admit to taking pleasure in elbowing their way through a stand of stubborn door blockers with sharp jabs. Imagine how much worse it would be if you were a weird little knee-high teddy bear.

Why you gotta talk so loud?!

You may be having fun, but please keep your voices down.

This one, I don't think it would go over quite so well in the New York subway. You can just bet that a bunch of feminists would be all like, Why'd you have to use women to illustrate people talking too much on the train?!
Because you know how women are. Noisy!
Really, though, the groups of people I've personally witnessed being noisy on the train are, in order, first, groups of Americans, especially beefy guys, but mixed-sex clusters of skinny 20-somethings are super racket-prone, too, especially on an afternoon train toward, say, the beach; next, Japanese middle or high school kids in sports uniforms, maybe on a post-game high and usually with a pair of den-mother chaperones ignoring their rowdiness; next, groups of three or four swaying Japanese salarymen, collars open, redfaced and repetitive on the way home at night; and last, by a lot, pairs of young women who are all like, you know, and-then-he-was-like, and so on. 
So maybe they didn't choose the actual noisiest, but the least likely to complain about being portrayed as such. Maybe the first draft was a bunch of US military guys tossing gum wrappers and plastic bottles at each other across the aisle, and then someone thought better of it.

Why you gotta sit like that?!

Please make room for others to sit when possible

Tokyo Metro should license these posters to other cities. (New York would edit out the apologetic "when possible," I would think.)

Rainy day subway manners

Rainy season approaches, outdoors and in.

Yellow. Different. Better

I tried to upload this a few times this month, and it crashed my phone every time. Maybe it's because I was writing unfriendly things about the fluffy bunnies and cute kitties we've been subjected to in the Tokyo Metro Manners posters all this past year and the machine was trying to save me from looking like the kind of jerk who doesn't like cute widdle animals. I have nothing against cute animals! The fact is, for two years, the subway had the sometimes-befuddling but always bright and original yellow posters, and then suddenly they downshifted into boring stock photographs of animals with insipid slogans. Nothing original or interesting about them. A lot of people take issue with the scolding tone of the signs, but I was happy to see this guy up at the beginning of April (the beginning, of course, of the new subway poster fiscal year). The stylized guy, the oblique English that doesn't really match the Japanese, the tragicomically hapless teddy bear - it looks like Bunpei is back with an interrobang.

Thumbs up, Chinly McSuave

 

December's Tokyo Metro manners poster. Tokyo Reporter explained it (and others) rather fabulously. I'll just leave it at a nod of approval for smooth exits and thumbs-up (thumbs-ups?) to strangers. And, is that an ascot?

Turn off your phone, fancy man

This Tokyo Metro Manners poster has a lot going on. Background: there are signs and announcements on many trains asking that cell phones be turned off near the priority seats, ostensibly to protect people with pacemakers. Don't get me started on that one. Though, if I had a pacemaker and there were any chance, however minimal, that having a few square feet in the city where there was a slightly reduced amount of electromagnetic radiation trying to scramble my heartbeat, I guess I'd want people to turn off their phones there. I suppose. But I've digressed.

So, here, we have the usual put-upon poster lady sitting in a priority seat with her child. (And what's happened to her usual partner in moroseness, now that she's had the kid? Has he abandoned her? Is that why she looks so glassy and vacant?) Lurking above her is a golden-haired man (foreigner? host?) in a flashy white coat. He whips his phone out and holds it aloft. Is this some kind of a threat? Is he going to throw it? Make an inconsiderate phone call? Zap all the pacemakers in range? No! This prince of a man is simply shutting off his phone. He is surrounded by a sparkly aura of good manners. Mother and child are agape.
I would be, too, if I ever saw this happen. Shutting off phones near the priority seats is the most flagrantly flouted of all the manners.

Don't forget your umbrella... at home?

 

I saw this exact thing happen right before my eyes yesterday. So maybe the sign is working. 

But I have to say, I feel like the message here is getting a little bit convoluted. The headline urges you to be vigilant and thoughtful in interacting with fellow passengers: spot, tap, return. The tagline asks that you be careful about your own property. Taken together, it all adds up to a less umbrella-littered commute for everyone, but, separately, the two parts of the sign are addressing different people and different behaviors. The message is not consistent.

Even just saying that, I realize it's crazy. Of course the cartoon can be about both looking out for the other guy and looking out for yourself at the same time. This is clearly the technical editor in me who's protesting. (She's not really a good time.) Being professionally hypervigilant about grammatical problems is a particularly painful occupational hazard around here. (I imagine it would be pretty rough in the US, too, actually.)

So. Even though this campaign is ringing a little funny for me, I still like it and am grateful to it for making me realize that I may be losing my English marbles.

 

PS Saying that one is "professionally hypervigilant about grammatical problems" all but guarantees a few typos. Wacky KitKat (or York Peppermint Patty, for fellow Japanlanders) to the first person who finds mine in this post.

Whatever you do, do it at home

I didn't know it at the time, but these monthly Tokyo Metro manners posters started right when we got to Tokyo. Now, it looks like the final chapter. How many past favorites do you recognize?
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I wish he had worked in the guy diving through the door somehow. And the splattery ramen. Oh! And the drunk salary man! Darn. I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but I think I'm getting a little misty.

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More about the artist, Bunpei Yorifuji, and the manners campaign.

If-you-know-what-we-mean

Please do it at home.

Is it me, or is the line blurring between the real Tokyo Metro Manner posters and the parodies and remixes?

He did it at home!

Please do it in America.

Please refrain from throwing in-car Halloween parties.

Or maybe at work? The important thing is that he did it. Amazing work, @tomoakiyama, exactly what I was hoping for (and then some) in the original Hang it at Home contest.

Almost makes me feel like having another little contest... anyone else feeling inspired?

Tis the season to do it at home

 

Please refrain from drunken behavior.

It's bounenkai 忘年会 season, when end-of-the-year company parties pile up. Drinking with coworkers can be part of the job description any time of year,  but you are especially likely to see (or be) an unfortunate overindulger in December. There's no guarantee that these parties will help you "forget the year," as the name promises, but they do seem likely to make you forget the night.

We saw these two poor guys get dragged off the train at its last stop in Shinagawa the other night as the train was going out of service.  In Shibuya, as the last Yamanote train was sweeping through its last loop for the night, the opposite maneuver: station cops working in pairs roused heavy sleepers from the platform floor and tossed them into the full train. You have to wonder where they get shuffled off to when they get to the end of the line. I think for both directions on the Yamanote, that's Ikebukuro. Anyone gotten off the last train at the end of a line and seen what happens?

Last December's do it at home poster, also about passing out drunk.

Transform yourself into a beeyootiful princess...

...at home.

This happens in Tokyo as in New York and, I would wager, as in any city that has both women and subways. Every so often someone pulls out some makeup  - maybe just a mascara, maybe a full traveling vanity - and goes to town.

Whether it's a touch-up or an overhaul, I can't help watching.

It's partly the pull of a good before-and-after story. A powder puff or some blush on a brush is nothing-to-see-here; I'll probably go back to my crossword puzzle. But the danger of some of the other implements! It's like watching a drunk guy wander toward traffic. You can't look - but you can't not look. Have you ever gotten close to a mascara wand? Close enough to see the individual bristles? I've been known (I know, I know) to pass a few furtive swipes through my lashes when the train is stopped at a station. But bringing that row of tarred, sharp bristles within a blink of an open eye on a crowded, moving train - elbows, swerves, and sudden stops be damned - is drama. Pointy pencils for eyebrows and eyelids are only slightly less riveting. If she doesn't actually lose an eye, she could easily end up with a crazed Cleopatra line around it. The stakes are different, but still high, for lipliner pencils and lipsticks. Miss the recorded announcement that "the train will sway, please be careful," and people will be asking all day "Why so serious?"

I'm not bothered by people playing beauty parlor on the train the same way I am by, say, nail clipping or sinus clearing. Unless you are really clumsy with the concealer, it strikes me as a relatively victimless crime.

I think a better warning would be "apply makeup at your own risk."

Anyone can Hang it at Home

UPDATED RULES - now with more randomness.

Just leave your name. I'll use random.org to pick someone at random.

I will put your name in twice if you leave an example of bad train behavior you have seen (anywhere in the world) that would be better off Done at Home.

I will put your name in three times if you make something visual.

That's it. 

You've joined me in mocking appreciating the Tokyo Metro "Do it at home" manners posters for over a year now here.

Now, I would like to give you the chance to do it at home. For real.

I have one copy of the October 2009 poster (man splattering/stabbing cup noodles) that I will happily send it to the reader anywhere in the world who comes up with the best Do-it-at-X poster whose name is drawn as the winner.

Write your idea in the comments. Or, photoshop something on your own site or Flickr and post a link.

For inspiration, here again is the official Tokyo Metro manners site with all the posters so far.

This will go until the end of the month, when the new posters go up. Do it at work. Do it at home. But do it soon!

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Random.org has made the winner one Ms. Trixie Bedlam. Congratulations!

And the winner is...

A big old arigatou to everyone who participated in the first Japandra Tokyo subway poster giveaway.


In addition to a few lovely people who do not seem to have active blogs, I got great entries from these guys.

Invisible Gaijin skewers Japanese news and keeps his twitter followers laughing.

Jen writes a blog that, despite the name, is a not-so-generic person goes to Japan blog, featuring a killer crystal-covered phone and a brave foray into homemade rice cooker yogurt.

Dekooning has a charming blog packed with pictures of a summer trip to Japan.

Joe Jones writes tons of smart stuff about aeronautics and Japanese politics.

Vika seems to do a little bit of everything in California, and she writes on arts.

Jamaipanese lives in Jamaica and writes about Japan. How cool is that?

Claytonian is a self-described hopeless romantic with lots of friendly and useful advice on learning Japanese.

JJWalsh gives advice for hanging out and getting around in Hiroshima on several different sites.


The decision was tough. But, the first ever Tokyo Metro subway poster giveaway is going to Claytonian, for "Do it at home." It's to the point and relevant, and the subway would be a better place if everyone followed it. Congratulations, and thank you again to everyone who entered.

The sharp-eyed among you will notice this was the first poster giveaway. Stay tuned, friends...


PS. Did anyone notice that "Groping is a no-no" is a salute to The Mighty Boosh?

Keep your fork use private.

A dig at non-Japanese?

Now, who would do such a thing?

Please do it in the athletic club

Public opinion seems to be against me here, but they shouldn't make them look so fun if they don't want you to play olympics on the hangstraps. They're perfect little rings!

All the Tokyo subway manner posters so far (official site).

Dodge seaweed?

Not sure quite what the beach-appropriate behavior here is. Wearing crocs? Pushing ladies toward oncoming vehicles? Frowning disapprovingly at young people having fun? All of the above, perhaps?

Last August's "Do it at the beach sign" was also a little obscure.