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On the railroad
By Betsy Herzog
 Every day, a dozen times per day, I hear a groaning rumble and then feel the vibration of my single-pane windows.
Knowing I live in Japan, you might assume that these are the reverberations of small earthquakes. But earthquakes are unexpected, and this quaking is consistent. I would be annoyed about the almost incessant shaking, if it did not also signify a great convenience in my life – public transportation. I live 200 meters from the elevated bullet train (Shinkanson) tracks. As it flies through the countryside at night, it lights up the hills quickly, like slow lightning. Though I live in a rural area, the passing Shinkansen is a reminder of the industrial cities that aren’t far away. At 200, miles an hour, the megalopolis’ Osaka, Hiroshima and Tokyo are a simple day trip away. Imagine being able to hop on a train in Asheville and get to Raleigh in 60 minutes. That’s what it’s like.
But trains aren’t merely a way to get between two points; in Japan they are a place in and of themselves. In fact, they are an institution that shape our daily lives. They dictate when people in my town get to work (after 8:17 a.m.) and when parties end (before 11:33 p.m.). During the week, septuagenarian women meet their friends en route to the city for a day of shopping. The friends arrange to meet on the third car, aggressively saving rows of seats for their companions who will board at the next stop. They are as chatty as the high school students who get on at 4:06 p.m. with their uniforms, backpacks, and awkwardly growing bodies splayed upon every inch of free space. The rest of us nudge in where we can.
When you spend so much time in any place, you get pretty comfortable, and for most people the train is a place to catch up on sleep. At any given time, I estimate that 40 percent of the riders are sleeping. If you happen to be awake, you can see their eyes close as they start to sway gently with the rocking of the engine. On the last train, around midnight, the percentage of sleepers is closer to 70. With so many heads bobbing, it seems like there is a sleeping potion in the air.
Japanese trains are a far cry from those in this country, but the music is familiar, says Betsy Herzog of Cullowhee.
Sleeping, however, is the least interesting activity to observe on trains. Favorites include text messaging (talking on cell phones is absolutely forbidden), drinking beer (no laws against open containers here) and putting on makeup. Commuter trains aren’t exactly smooth sailing, but working women are remarkably adept at prepping themselves during a bumpy ride. Try plucking and redrawing your eyebrows on a jam-packed 7 a.m. local. On one trip I was wedged between two business men who nursed three beers apiece and a young lady who pulled a battery-powered curling iron out of her purse and got busy. And I recently saw a woman heat an eyelash curler with a cigarette lighter and get to work on her lashes as if it were nothing more than dabbing on some lip gloss.
Depending on public transportation is far different from my car-centered life in North Carolina. Yet every time I board the train I am reminded of home: as it approaches the platform, a speaker blares out a cheesy trumpet rendition of that American classic, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
(Editor’s Note: Betsy Herzog of Cullowhee, a 2005 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is spending a year teaching English in a Japanese high school. The Herald will feature monthly columns by Herzog through July, when she returns to the United States for graduate school.)
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