Transportation and Shopping

関西外大
Kansai Gaidai University





September 7.
Transportation and Shopping.

Bicycles are a convenient way to get around our town, and the university has several bicycle parking lots, each with space for hundreds and watched by security guards. It's said that bicycles are sometimes stolen, but it's never happened to us. The Asian Studies Program that we teach in has bikes for the visiting professors, although they had lost track of them. Sure enough, we were able to locate our trusty iron steeds from our 2002 visit, dusty and needing pumped up, but otherwise none the worse for wear. One tricky thing -- remember to ride on the left and look right for oncoming traffic.

Stores provide parking for bikes, but at the stations bikes have to be parked in pay garages that cost as much as taking the bus. The result is that everywhere there's a "No Bike Parking Here" sign, there are a hundred bikes parked. The "bicycle police" swoop down occasionally and cart all the illegally parked bikes off to an impound lot, but that doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent. A new development since 2002 is that there are pay "stanchions" for bikes at some of these spots around stations. Lock up your bike, then on your return type in your location number and pay the machine so that the "stanchion" will release your bike. 90 minutes are free, but after that it's 200 yen ($1.75) for 24 hours. For regular commuters, that can really add up. In 2002 almost all bikes were basic 1-speed city bikes, like riding in low gear all the time, with a few mountain bikes making inroads. Now in 2006 the variety is much greater. 3-speeds are getting popular, and I've seen some 7-speed Shimano enclosed-gears-hub bikes as well as exterior derailleurs ingeniously covered by a guard that protects trouser legs. Electric-assist bikes are common among older folks. Hmmm. I'm thinking about that hill up from the train station.

The university is on a main road where many lines funnel down toward the station, so we have bus service every 5 minutes. 220 yen ($1.90) is the fare, but we can cut it 10% with prepaid cards. In 25 minutes we can walk to the station, but the highway is so congested and the walking path so narrow that it it's an unpleasant experience, maybe even dangerous. Walking may seem more appealing when the weather turns cooler.

The way to get to Osaka (25 min.) and Kyoto (35 min.) is the electric commuter train of the Keihan Line. These commuter line companies are an interesting business concept, because the corporation makes lots of its money from its department stores that are located in terminal stations and principal stations like ours at Hirakata. The system is cleverly designed with limited express service and local service integrated in a way that maximizes speed and efficiency for all. In the years since we were here last, more limited express service has been added to Hirakata's schedule, a nice convenience for us. We find that we spend about us much on transportation here in Hirakata as would would maintaining, insuring, and fueling our car at home.

Shopping is a fascination and yet a frustration for us, even after having returned to Japan several times. Stores really put on great displays with real artistic sense, and the customer receives an almost unbelievable level of service. The variety and quality of food and merchandise is high and getting higher. The frustration, partly responsible for culture shock, comes from well, being an incompetent shopper. Those of us in responsible positions in our jobs aren't usually in a position where we don't know the answer, can't find things, have to ask for help, and generally feel stupid. Living in a culture with a different way of seeing the organization of things is a humbling experience both in high art and at the grocery store. Just because the package looks similar to a US product doesn't really count. We have bought pickling salt for sugar, chocolate for coffee, and some things that we really couldn't tell you what they are! Why isn't the confectionery sugar with the sugar? It's with the cake decorations, logically enough. The kanji Chinese characters used to write many Japanese words are a stumbling block in the grocery, too. How do you write "low fat milk" in kanji? Now we know, although for the first time today we saw a carton that also said "low fat milk" in Roman letters. It's a big help to memorize katakana, the syllabary used by Japanese to write foreign words. We needed cream today, and it's クリム, the equivalent of ku-ree-m(u).

As in many European markets, we bag our own groceries and take our own string bag. That's a little eccentric, because everyone else is happy to waste more plastic bags. At another time I'll write about the paradoxical situation of recycling--way too much unnecessary packaging, but a complex, strictly enforced recylcing procedure.

Japan still has many shops run by people who take a lot of pride in producing and selling a limited product -- tofu, for example. The small cafes and bakery shops are everywhere and display wonderful-looking goods. It can be a pleasant diversion just to drop in and try something new. Maybe it looks like a donut, but there's sweetened red bean paste inside. Generally, the Western-looking baked goods disappoint us, but they fly off the shelves to the Japanese customers.

Bakeries have fanciful "French" names such as our market's "Maman de Marché." We're still looking for a good stiff loaf of German sourdough bread, but a Japanese company called "Vie de France" has got some French recipes down well.