New York:
After temporarily (and hoping to return abroad soon) returning to the United States, you decide to check out the city. Searching for the subway for a little while, across the street you notice the elegant green-ish (sometimes black) railing leading underground. You see the train lines: Q, A and what not. Not bad, you think. As you proceed down the steps, you picture somewhere in your mind, that you could get an unpleasant surprise just around the corner at the bottom of the stairs.
It doesn’t happen and you continue walking towards the metro. In the more popular stations, you hear somebody playing some nice music and put money into his or her pouch as you walk on by.
Finally, you reach the ticketing machine and take out your Metro card. If you’re lucky, it will work on your first swipe. If not, you have a few more good swipes to go until you can enter. Again, somewhere, some small section of your brain is thinking, “why not just jump over this thing?” but that thought goes away for most people.
You’re in. The train that you want to catch arrives, loud and screechy. As the door opens you try to find a seat. As you look to your left there’s a few open seats next to a spilled bottle of Coca Cola, but to the right there’s an open seat between two scary looking guys. A dilemma.
The entertainment in New York City subways is pretty cool. Sometimes there can be comedians, rappers and what not. Other times there can be a nice show, some breakdancers and even crazy people.
When you arrive at your stop you realize, it’s not so bad. The subway does what it’s supposed to do. The city’s unique multi-cultural setting makes up for it.
Tokyo:
As you walk to your nearest train station out of around 882 (Wikipedia) in the Metropolis, you take the time to notice how visually dense everything is, and super clean. You begin to approach the station and suddenly the amount of shops and buildings has magically increased 5 times over. You look to your left and see the ticket purchasing machines, but you don’t need to recharge your Suica card today. You turn right and approach the entrance. Holding your Suica card over the scanner, you hear a beep and the scanner glows blue as it recognizes your card. A few centimeters up a little tortoise screen shows your balance on the card.
You think to yourself (again), “Wow, everytime, EVERYTIME this thing recognizes my card. Even when I have it inside my wallet it still works.” You also remember the time when you used your Japanese phone instead of a card, but decided to go back to just using your Suica.
You follow the signs to the Yamanote line that circles the city and head towards Shinjuku. As you get off the escalator you notice the view from the top of the platform over your part of the city. It’s beautiful. Music plays. The train comes. It looks nice. It feels nice.
As the people start to exit the train new passengers are pushing to get in. Suddenly there’s a rush to get a seat. You turn to your left and a middle-aged women stole the seat you were eyeing. To your right a businessman took it. You just decide to stand and check out the ads playing on the tv.
You hear the chirping of fake birds through the loudspeakers outside. It’s (usually) relaxing. The music plays and some nice sounding voices tell the doors to close. The train continues to its next stop, rarely making screeching sounds. As the train is moving, you appreciate the view of the city outside. You look to the second tv screen to check in how many minutes the train will arrive at your stop.
It looks like the train will arrive at your stop in exactly 7 minutes. Almost always on time.
