Punctual

Did you hear about this apology that a train company made in Japan?
“A rail company in Japan has apologised after one of its trains departed 20 seconds early… In a statement, the company said the train had been scheduled to leave at 9:44:40 local time but left at 9:44:20”
An apology for being wrong by 20 seconds? Wow!

Inevitably this news became the topic of a discussion on the site Slashdot. And as always, user comments on the topic were hilarious. One guy wrote:
“The conductor will now commit hara-kiri after apologizing for shaming his family.”
He was promptly corrected by another:
“That would be seppuku, not harakiri. The two are closely related, but harakiri is just suicide by disembowelment, while seppuku is the ritualized form done to spare others shame.”
Who in turn was contradicted:
“The two mean the same thing, seppuku is just based on the chinese reading. Same as ninja and shinobi and all that jazz.”
The conversation then veered to suicide rates in different countries. Someone mentioned it was zero in Antigua and Barbuda. To which came the retort:
“Well, if you lived on a Caribbean beach, would you want to commit suicide?”

Another guy commented on the effort put in to always be on time:
“I watched a documentary about the drivers. They calculate there speed to make up for a single second of delay.”
Upon which came this great comment:
“That's nothing! Japanese airlines flying from the US to Japan will go so quick you'll arrive the day before you left!”
(Well, he got that inverted: you lose a day when flying from the US to Japan, but gain a day flying the other way. But point understood).

As comments flowed about the lack of punctuality in every city outside Japan, one guy noted the dark side of this focus on punctuality:
“This is indicative of the kind of mindset that led to the tragic train crash of 2005. A train was running 90 seconds behind, and under tremendous pressure from his superiors, the operator sped the train up and ended up derailing it. If it weren't for the new automatic brake systems installed, this would likely happen again (because I see no change in the culture).”

And it ended with this comment on what the Japanese apologize about:
“The Japanese apologize for trivialities but they NEVER apologize for the real crimes. Such as war crimes and other such niceties.”

It’s because of comments like these that we are glued to the Internet, isn’t it?

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarNovember 27, 2017 at 12:03 PM

    Looks like too much fuss about such trivial time deviation. Unusual.

    Most advanced countries keep time, but avoiding such hair-splitting accuracy to time keeping. That kind of approach may be OK.

    In India, we do not attach much importance to time keeping, in general. It is not part of our cultural attitude to a large extent. Time-keeping has a wide spectrum of variation, with respect to individuals and often organizations themselves, in our country.

    If a VIP turns up pretty late (extending to part of hour or more an hour even), keeping a whole gathering waiting, not all VIPs have the courtesy of apologizing for their delay. Also, lament on delays or discussing why many netas don't feel any need to apologize are not considered worthwhile thoughts here.

    Maybe Japan is overly fussy. Maybe we are not enough fussy (actually some of us may be uncaring at times). Somewhere middle is better, as always the case.

    ReplyDelete

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