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Situation 1 Suppose you take a subway in Osaka. You buy a ticket and wait on the platform at the station, and you will notice electric bulletin boards, which show you where the next train is. According to the train’s movement, the indication changes and at the very moment the train is about to come, the board shows “Attention!” Surprisingly, this system has been used since 1949, and all the subway stations have some kind of display. Now it is applied to the bus-location system too.
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Situation 3 When you walk in the city, you can see many crosswalks as many cities have. If you have time to watch, you will see some amazing scenes. A walker comes close to the crosswalk. The traffic light is red, but the person checks the traffic and the next moment the person starts to cross the road while the light is still red. In other words, many walkers do not wait for the green light but take any opportunity in crossing. This also can be said of early starts at big crossroads, where people cannot cross against the light because of heavy traffic. In Umeda, which is one of the busiest places in Osaka, there is a special traffic light with an electric bulletin board to show walkers how long they have to wait. That is, this light can prevent walkers from being irritated too much. Nevertheless, even this special light cannot stop early starts, and other normal lights seem to allow even more early starts. |
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Situation 4
You want to go to a restaurant your guidebook recommends. In order to know where it is, you ask a person. In the answer, you hear a strange word “Ue-roku”. What is “Ue-roku”? “Ue-roku” means “Uehonmachi rokuchome (roku means 6),” a place name in Osaka. Osaka people tend to shorten longer words. They like to speak fast, so longer words interrupt their flow. This tendency is often seen in place names. For example, “Umeda shinmichi (shinmichi literally means a new road)” is called “Ume-shin” for short, “Tenjinsujibashi rokuchome” is transformed into “Ten-roku”. Shops are the objects of shortened words. For example, “McDonalds”, a very famous hamburger chain all over the world, changes into “Makudo”. “Festival gate”, which is an amusement park, is called “Fesuge”. And “America mura (mura means a village)”, which is a popular area for the young, is transformed into “Ame-mura”. |
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| Situation 5 You find a restaurant and walk into it. At the entrance, you may notice a sign, “Please wait for a minute until a staff member comes.” Nevertheless, the customers in front of you ignore the sign and find a space. Moreover one of them begins to clear off the table arbitrarily. When a waiter comes close, they give an order whether the waiter is ready or not. It looks like a selfish thing, but the customers do not seem to think so. |
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