Some thoughts 6 months in and after a trip to Japan

Taxi is in use by a customer already. Searching it also brings up 賃走 and having not been to Japan I couldn’t really tell you about choosing one over the other, but the Japanese definitions are functionally the same thing. The latter is easier to pick up, both by Jisho and one of my Japanese dictionaries, though. This is pulling the 賃送 version from a taxi terminology dictionary, interestingly.

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if you can’t find things in a dict but you suspect there are real use case scenarios, it’s worth stuffing it into google or duckduckgo with 意味 or 英語 or なんですか or something. often jpn people have the exact same question

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Thank you, both!

Erm… lol? :rofl: :man_facepalming:

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Sorry, by bad. Typo. Correct sign is 賃走

Of the 6 possible scenarios, the red 空車 can be a bit of a rare sight in the post last train time frames. Especially if it is raining. Last Friday night (technically Saturday morning), I got a good 3 to 4 kms walking towards home (bit more than half way) in before I finally saw one. I saw taxis pass by at a rate of about 3 or 4 a minute, but all with green or yellow signs. On the upside, my taxi fair was less.

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Interesting that although these signs are for conveying information to the person hoping to flag the taxi down, they’ve been colour coded the opposite way round – the red status is good for the customer but bad for the taxi driver, whereas the green statuses are all the ones that are great for the taxi driver and definitely not what the customer wants to see…

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I dunno if it’s about benefit to the driver, because there’s a curious tendency for Japanese colour-coding to have red=vacant and green=occupied. On my last trip in Japan I caught a Kaiji express on the Chuo Line, and has colour-coded lights over every seat, where green = reserved and occupied, yellow = reserved but passenger hasn’t boarded yet, and red = vacant.

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Red / green are just arbitrary. They have sometimes different meanings in Japan.

A red stock price means the price is rising for example… Green traffic lights are commonly referred to as blue… There is interesting research on how different cultures have developed different understandings of colour.

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I am genuinely curious where cardinal directions are not a common choice for exit names now :eyes:

notes: Australians like streets

I’ve got no plans to visit the UK, but this is good to know

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Here’s an example at Notting Hill (stock pulled from Google Images). The Tube has pretty user-centric designs, with a mix of everything: exits are numbered with streets, notable landmarks and some notes on which side you’re exiting on:

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Thanks for sharing your experience, OP.
This post made me relive my second trip to Japan - I had a similar experience overall, and also I was at about the same WK level and I remember learning 流す while being there, which, as you can imagine, ended up being an extremely useful word :laughing:.

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You guys forgot in your color discussion to mention that green is blue… Or blue is green, I don’t remember…

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Not to be that guy but someone actually brought it up a few posts up lol

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Oh and of course whether the situation requires a 小 or 大 (流す). Come to think of it I still haven’t learned the kanji for hot or cold, which would have been useful.

Something else I’ve been thinking about recently is the benefit of learning the kanji form of vocabulary first/simultaneously. For example, the various “electricity” words come in one big chunk at the end of level 8 and the readings are easy (all でん-). Telephone is a word you’d learn quite early on (phonetically) in a class and it makes no sense - like what the hell is a denwa when almost every appliance name is bastardised English? Coming from the opposite direction and learning the kanji first, “electric talk/speak” 電話 makes a lot more sense. I believe “fridge” is the same (冷蔵庫), when you see it in kanji form, as is train, etc. At some point learning vocabulary you’d figure out that でん is the word for electric and you might be able to make that association naturally, but starting out it’s an oddball.

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Oh no
:see_no_evil:

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Only for the relatively simpler JR stations. The subway stations with all their tunnels and branching exits make that somewhat impractical and they number them. (and sometimes sub-number them)

Kabuki-za is at exit 3

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what are you talking about…? :cat:

are the streets not names but numbers?? like 316 and 304?

Eh, addresses don’t really work like that there. Most streets don’t have “names”, the major intersections and neighborhoods do. But to keep it confusing, some major streets DO have names. (Even those names usually refer to a specific segment of the road though, like a shopping district)

I’m not sure where those numbers on the map come from; you won’t see any signs or labels like that on the street itself. (Or at least I haven’t, and I’m familiar with this area)

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“the light is green” as in the traffic light, is “the light is blue” in Japanese . There are historical reasons for that, it’s a long story :grin:

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そう、東京の渋谷交差点のように