Near the Train Tracks

This is another lost post. Dated 2-20-07. I'm sure it still looks like this, though. That's an apartment building hugging the tracks. A little too close for my comfort! Don't you know that it's noisy!

A train crossing in my neighborhood. An apartment building on one side. Fields on the other.

Train Crossing

The sign warns that there is a train crossing ahead. That is an overpass for cars in the background. Click on the labels below for more about trains.

Emergency Button at a Train Crossing

Click on the picture to enlarge it. Can you see the sign with the red arrow? Because of the angle it looks like it is in front of the train. The arrow is pointing to an emergency button. The emergency button is on the other side of the narrow street. There is an arrow next to the emergency button. It is pointing the other way. Arrows light up to tell which direction the train is coming. This is a very small neighborhood train crossing. Note how close the train is to the apartment building on the right!

This is the sign pointing to the emergency button.

This is the emergency button. This sign says to lift up the cover and push the button when there is an emergency. The cover is actually a thick piece of plastic that you slide over.

Emergency Button on a Train Platform

This is an emergency button on the platform of the train station. The yellow sign with the red stripes to the right is written in English and Japanese. The button is not directly under the sign.

The red button is the one to push to alert train station employees. The others are for their use.

The Japanese can be translated as "Emergency Call Button".

Above and On the Street

We were sitting and waiting at a traffic light. A shinkansen or bullet train slowly pulled into the station. The light turned green as the train came in.

As we were waiting this truck drove by us. It has billboards or advertisements on its sides.

Crowds of people were waiting for the traffic lights, too. It was lunch time.

Changing Trains

Big Sister went to a school festival today. She is in her last year of junior high school. Part of her summer homework was to make appointments to visit at least three schools. Going to their fall festivals will give her an idea which one to choose. She will take exams for three schools in January or February.

Litle Brother and I went out to lunch today. We got to ride in a new train on our usual train line. We sat and compared it to the old ones. We decided it was much nicer.




I will post a picture of the inside of an old train later. The new one seemed larger. We noticed the windows were larger and they were tinted. Even so, the sun was hot. A lady jumped up to pull down the shades, but there weren't any. This new, improved train had no shades.




This sign is in most corner seats of trains. Can you figure out what it says by looking at the pictures? There are priority seats on buses, too.

Walking home from the station, I was thinking of Grandparents' Day when all of a sudden a very old man zoomed past us on his bicycle. He was holding a cane in one hand while gripping the handlebar!

It reminded me of a friend who was using a cane because she had hurt her foot. I went with her to the airport. She was about to miss her plane so she took off running. Running with a cane. That's what you would call "mind over body". That seems hopeful to me. Just yesterday I posted about carts with seats for the elderly. Today I saw another exceptional old person.

Working on the Railroad

I was walking along when I saw all these men on the train tracks. I stopped in my tracks. Someone was blowing a whistle in some sort of code. Everyone scrambled to the sides. It's something that you don't see or hear very often. All of sudden the crossing bars came down and bells started ringing and SWOOSH! This train zoomed by.



Trains come through every couple of minutes or so. It must take them a long to get a job done.

A View of A Train

Samples of Passnet Cards

These cards are used to make the benches that were shown in the May 19th post. See the post for pictures of the benches. The cards are made of lightweight plastic. They are flexible. Train passengers can buy these cards, so they don't have to stand in line at the ticket machine each time they need to ride the train. These are for the Keio train line. They are sold in denominations of 100 to 5000 yen and they come, as you can see, with many different designs.

This is the basic design. It shows different kinds of trains.



Some cards are Disney,




some are cute animals,






and some are seasonal.



In the May 19th post, I mentioned that the turnstile kept the cards after they were used up. That was incorrect. (I have edited the post.) The turnstile only keeps tickets that are bought daily for specific trips. Used up passnet cards are turned in at the station either by handing them to a train station employee or by putting them in a box.

Big Sister has a few points still on some of these cards. At first, she wanted to start a collection of them but has decided to turn them in at the station. Here is the box at our station.