Keihan bus themed hotel room

[katoftw]

https://www.kyoto-towerhotel.jp/stay/rooms/bus_room/?fbclid=IwAR1R9y10zZ3A7MqYSnDEH0hxhn1vIoFyjWFiZvWyrUos7Nb4Q-X1kI1ag2c

 

One for @JR 500系

 

A Keihan Railway bus themed hotel room. Along with n scale models and workable drivers station.

Edited April 3, 2021 by katoftw

[JR 500系]

aaaahhhh interesting! I love it! You wont find me sleeping on the bed in this room!

[gavino200]

That's really interesting and quite strange to me. I'm guessing from this that it must be common in Japan for people to be bus enthusiasts. I've been wondering about this for a while. Sammy is the only outright bus enthusiast that I've ever known of, so I've been a bit bewildered by it. But with the sheer number of busses that Tomytec releases, there's obviously a market for it. 

 

I'm amazed how attitudes to public transport and especially buses differs in different countries. Growing up in Ireland, the bus was important and there was no stigma at all to using public transport. But the system was awful and punctuality was completely absent. There was a timetable but there was no expectation that buses would appear anything close to on time. Sometimes we'd wait an hour and then three would arrive in convoy. Things are I'm sure different now, but that's how it was back in the day, and the bus was always much maligned. 

 

In my adolescent years I started spending my summers in Germany. I was amazed to see, for the first time in my life, buses actually running on time. If a bus was supposed to arrive at a stop at ten past the hour, then generally there'd be no one at the stop at eight minutes past. A throng of people would arrive at nine minutes past. At ten past, the bus arrived and everyone would embark. At eleve past the stop was empty again. I was fascinated by this every time I saw it. I used to tell Germans how amazing this was for me. I was bemused to find that Germans complained massively about delays and imperfections in the train a public transport system. They held it to a much higher standard, but as in Ireland it was also much maligned. 

 

When I moved to the US there was a whole nother issue with the bus. It's improving now, but there has always been a  social stigma to using public transport in general, but especially with the bus. There's a perception that buses are dirty things for unfortunate losers who have no other means. Even in NYC where cars simply make no sense, people make a choice between cabs and subway, but most people avoid the bus. I used to take it a lot, because for many journeys it was the best. But I frequently got a surprised "What, you took the bus?" reaction, with a hint of shock horror. 

 

Whenever I visit a country, I try to used public transport as much as possible. I just like to see as much as I can, and to get a taste of ordinary life in the country. I used buses in Japan. They were punctual and clean, and my experience was good. But I have no idea how the bus is perceived in Japan. Could it be that Japan is a corner of the world were the bus is not maligned? Where the bus is actually.....loved? 

[railsquid]

Put it this way, on one of the TV channels (I forget which) there's a programme where a group of minor celebrities (I forget which, probably changes every episode) attempt to travel between arbitrary points A and B using only public buses.

 

Also not so long ago I was browsing in the local bookshop and was mildly (but only mildly) bemused to see they were selling  a book titled "Every Bus Stop in Japan (Kanto Edition)".

 

In North America I have only ever used buses in Ottawa, which felt more like a (northern) European system.

 

Edited April 3, 2021 by railsquid

[railsquid]

6 minutes ago, railsquid said:

Put it this way, on one of the TV channels (I forget which) there's a programme where a group of minor celebrities (I forget which, probably changes every episode) attempt to travel between arbitrary points A and B using only public buses.

 

Correction, two of the TV channels (!):

• TV Asahi: 路線バスで寄り道の旅
• TV Tokyo: ローカル路線バス乗り継ぎの旅

First video which came up on Youtube:

 

 

Edited April 3, 2021 by railsquid

[cteno4]

Imagine it would help with a tv show here that had starts using the bus to get from point a to b. Might drum up interest riding the bus if folks figured they could end up sitting next to brad Pitt... good way to make the glitterati put their environmentalism where there mouth is and not just say I own a prius (but I fly my private jet to catch a Broadway show).

 

when I moved to DC for the first time in the early 90s I did not have a car and commuted the 2 miles to work by bus every day. DC system is decent and useful as the metro is only really designed to get folks into DC from the burbs and back not move them around the city. But it’s always has that stigma even in a city where getting around by car and parking is tough and taxi is usually the only other option. It was decently on schedule and I used it for a lot of moving around the area or getting to a metro to go further afield. never ran into anything dirty or bad situations on the bus, but riding a dc or nyc taxi would result in something unusual about ten percent of the time!
 

I use to have to interact with some visiting executive types some and take them to dinner and when I’d say we would need to get a cab from the offices (I resisted just taking them out to the bus stop in front of the office) they would usually ask how I got to work (we were in a corner of dc with no metro stop within a couple of miles) and I would say I don’t have a car, I take the bus, and I just loved the look of shock and horror on their face! Our marketing director would always use the ny air shuttle to get from the dc to New York offices and she use to be late half the time due to traffic or other tie ups (and this was pre 911 level security). One day I had to go back to the nyc office with her and she was insisting on the shuttle and I always took the train (bus, train, subway) so I just said see you there. I beat her by 10 minutes... infuriated her.

 

jeff

[maihama eki]

My favorite story of public transportation in Germany...

 

Early in my travels to Germany for work, a group of us planned to travel by train from the distant suburbs of Stuttgart to Munich for a meeting. Our German colleague lived a bit farther out on the local S-Bahn line relative to where we were staying. The night before, as we were bidding him farewell from our train stop, he told us "wait exactly there on the platform, the train will arrive at 7:09 AM, the door will open exactly at that spot and I will be waiting for you on the train sitting just opposite the door". That was of course exactly as it happened. We were all dumbfounded by this precision.

 

Of course, these same German colleagues used to say that they were similarly impressed with the public transit in Japan "in Germany the trains run on time to the minute, in Japan, the trains run on time to the second".

 

 

Edited April 3, 2021 by maihama eki