Bob Martin: Japan Fall 2023 Japan trip

[Guest]

I’ll post some rail (and other pictures) that might be of interest to others.

 

I’ll start off with my trip to Nagasaki yesterday on the Relay Kamome and Kamome.  Again, due to over tourism both trains were PACKED.  Hakata station is always busy, but this week seems way busy.  Over an hour line to get tickets (machine or counter).  Thankfully I got my tickets in Tokyo the week prior.  

 

 

 

Kamome with funky “eyeliner” and lips..

 

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Bob Martin

[Guest]

Various pics just hanging around the Shinkansen platform at Hakata Station…

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by Bob Martin

[Gunzel]

Nice Bob. Enjoy your time in Kyushu. 
 

i was in Hakata a couple of weeks ago and gave up waiting and caught a bus out to Hakata-Minami to buy a ticket and come back on the train. 

[Kamome]

16 hours ago, Bob Martin said:

Hakata station is always busy, but this week seems way busy.

Hakata station is beginning to become unbearably busy. The problem is it has not only become the hub for people travelling, but for residents shopping, eating, meeting people. Since the remodelling of the station with Hankyu and Amu Plaza, plus the demolition of the old post office and the restaurants in the Kitte building taking its place, other areas are starting to die a little. Tenjin used to be the hub so Hakata was relatively manageable. Today all the foot traffic heads to the Hakata station area on top of people catching trains and now the illuminations are all up so expect more crowds to fight through on the Hakata-guchi side.

[Guest]

I’m sure others have seen and/or used this JR web app to track your virtual station stamps (using GPS).  Works decent, but the GPS seems to be very slow with tracking compared to Google maps (not sure why they’re different), so I missed a few station stamps just riding the Yamanote loop. There are 938 station stamps across Japan to collect, but strangely there are some stations that don’t have stamps (ie. Yurakucho), you’d think they’d at least add the virtual stamp.  It’s definitely cool, and hopefully I’ll get a lot more stamps while I’m here.

 

 
 

 

 

 

A nice touch I think they did, is like any ink stamp, the harder (in this case, longer) you press, the better the impression…

 

Long press Harajuku vs a quick tap Ueno…

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Bob Martin

[mojo]

Oh, I didn't know about that! The website is here: https://railway150.jp/contents/stamp/pc/

 

There is a QR code you can scan for your phone, but it's web only. No app which would probably be faster.

 

This is getting slightly ridiculous now. When travelling I have so many apps and websites I need to manage.

 

- Google Maps for getting around

- Google My Maps website to keep track of where I've been

- Railway Station Photos app to fill in missing station photos

- Hard Off app to collect 1 point and increase my visited ratio

- And now the Train Trip website to collect stamps

 

All the while capturing photos and videos. I also have three different apps for reading my Suica card. I need to pick one but never get around to evaluating them properly. Oh, and now I have a gimbal I need the app for that as well when capturing video.

[Guest]

10 hours ago, mojo said:

This is getting slightly ridiculous now. When travelling I have so many apps and websites I need to manage.

 

- Google Maps for getting around

- Google My Maps website to keep track of where I've been

- Railway Station Photos app to fill in missing station photos

- Hard Off app to collect 1 point and increase my visited ratio

- And now the Train Trip website to collect stamps

 

All the while capturing photos and videos. I also have three different apps for reading my Suica card. I need to pick one but never get around to evaluating them properly. Oh, and now I have a gimbal I need the app for that as well when capturing video.

First world problems. LOL.  I guess you don’t recall the days, paper maps, guide books, cameras+lens, stamp books, etc.  Oh the hardships of modern life.
 

Back on track… the stamp web app is pretty slick, except many stations are subterranean (like Ueno), so no GPS, and you will have to physically leave the train to collect the stamp.  It could have been worse, JR could have used BT or NFC where you had to be physically at the stamp table to collect it.

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by Bob Martin

[cteno4]

Stamps, one of those things that just does not transfer to electronic! Looses all the charm and physicality of the nice stamps, totally different and greatly reduced experience. Sad.

 

jeff

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

Stamps, one of those things that just does not transfer to electronic! Looses all the charm and physicality of the nice stamps, totally different and greatly reduced experience. Sad.

 

jeff

Maybe for some people, but I tend to disagree.  I think this is a fantastic application of technology.  I’d never bother getting any physical stamps on any of my 11 previous trips to Japan.  For me, I like the challenge of getting them, I just wish I’d found this app before my JR pass was almost expired.  JR should really have been promoting this when you exchange the pass voucher.

 

I rarely save any of the bits and bobbles collected along the way.  I’ll take a pic of a ticket stub, etc, and make an album, but rarely or never save the actual items.

[cteno4]

The coolaid of modern culture.

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Bob, 

 

im sorry, I apologize that was a bit crude, crass, and reactionary of me.

 

Let me explain myself. I found the stamp systems so part of the japanese aesthetic and culture. It was all about of stopping at a station for a bit and experiencing it. You had to find the stamping station and wander the station a bit if larger station and experience the station. For a smaller station usually there was a ticket seller, station attendant or just fellow traveler around the stamping station that would chat and sometime want to see your stamps and experiences. There is something very, very human and visceral about this that I remember vividly and enjoyably all the way back from my first visit to Japan four decades ago (but I admit I’m the guy that vividly and enjoyably remembers the memory of my dicy ryokan in shinjuku that was all I could afford as a grad student when the lights went out and the cockroaches came out of the cracks in the tatomi mats!). These were some of the simplest, natural, and most wonderful interactions I had with fellow travelers from Japan and around the world in my travels in Japan. It’s being in the place, in the moment, that plants something in our soul that a digital app snap just aint gunna do for our soul.

 

Another very Japanese aesthetic part is actually doing the stamp itself. There is something so basic to the Japanese aesthetic of doing a stamp, the ink state of the pad, the ware of the stamp, your book, your attention to the stamp, that are just so elegant and fun that you will have your own stamp, unique from all others, that is so monkey human that is completely missed by a digital app. While I’ve maybe looked at those old stamp books (stored somewhere in the basement in a box) a handful of times they have reminded me so much more of my experiences japan and kept them alive in my memory’ so much more than the thousands of digital images I have.
 

A funny aside our club just did a very family train show this weekend where the lions club had a card for the kids to get each layout marked off as visited and if all knocked off they got a little prize on their way our. All the other clubs just x ed them off with a pen. One of our club members got a little stamp with a torii and Japan on it. It was amazing to see so many kids smile when we stopped too the time to put a stamp on their card and they stopped and registered us I  another way—It said and showed something. Simple human interactions like this make a differnace. Digital so many times can just obliterate or even mutate to horrid things these simple little things. For as much as we think we have advanced in the last few decades we are still the sam monkey brains with no evolution in that period.
 

Basically I don’t believe all this is replicated digitally in an app from a train passing thru a station. It’s very artificial and shallow like the whole NFT concept is. Technology is wonderful, and I’ve spent my life in both science and design on the bleeding edge of it, but it can’t always replace those things really human. Jjust doing it digitally like this just strips all the experience, interaction, and humanity from concept and aesthetic. Just because technology can do things well and conveniently for us does not mean it’s the right thing for orur monkey brain that has not evolved one bit in the time that technology has expanded.
 

sincerely,

 

jeff

[mojo]

12 hours ago, Bob Martin said:

First world problems. LOL.  I guess you don’t recall the days, paper maps, guide books, cameras+lens, stamp books, etc.  Oh the hardships of modern life.
 

Back on track… the stamp web app is pretty slick, except many stations are subterranean (like Ueno), so no GPS, and you will have to physically leave the train to collect the stamp.  It could have been worse, JR could have used BT or NFC where you had to be physically at the stamp table to collect it.

 

 

Oh, I'm old enough to remember what it was like. Had all the maps and books.

 

Getting a stamp when you didn't leave the train? Controversial, sounds a bit like cheating to me! ;-)