Love Your Ride

Last year Singapore's Public Transport Council made a crazy music video encouraging a bit of courtesy from straphangers on buses and the MRT.  The new campaign stars the campy Dim Sum Dollies.

The "Love your ride!" catchphrase plays every time a train rolls into a station. That's a bit excessive.

Tokyo Food

A snack package of what appears to be hazelnuts in a Tokyo mini-mart.

The Passengers ate all sorts of goodness in Tokyo.  The Japanese take their food seriously in the same manner as do the French with serious refinement of standardized age-old recipes.  We didn't suffer a bad meal once during our travels. Here are some highlights, though they exclude our early morning sushi adventure.  That will be a separate post.

Ramen noodles with all the fixings.

We had ramen one evening at a small restaurant not far from our ryokan.  Diners are supposed to choose their dishes from a vending machine outside the front door.  After the customer pays money in, the machine spits out a ticket for his order, and he brings it inside the restaurant.  We tried our very best to match the Japanese labels on the selection buttons with the pictures in the window.  Finally we gave up, and we were kindly greeted inside with an English menu.  This bowl of ramen was as big as my head.  I could barely get through half of it.  Passenger H unwisely had her own bowl, too, which by the time she quit looked like she only managed to pick out the seaweed, the half-boild egg, and two pieces of scrumptious fatty pork.  The yummy noodles are underneath a big pile of extras that also includes corn, bamboo shoots, and bean sprouts.  I think we paid JPY 950 per bowl (USD 11.25/GBP 7.10).  More dishes after the jump.  Click below left to keep reading.

Beware the Trains

Sign in the stairwell at Iriya Station in Tokyo.

Tee hee.  The Tokyo Metro trains have wind.

"Signs, Signs, Everywhere the Signs"

New York's Penn Station is as charming and welcoming as it is navigable.  This diagram shows the Long Island Railroad platforms deep underground.  Passengers connecting from LIRR to a NJ Transit or Amtrak train should head for the shaded are at the top left.  However, this map doesn't show any doorways or stairs there.  Trust me, the building doesn't feel any simpler in practice.  Image from MTA website.

The online magazine Slate began a multi-part series this week on signs.  The articles focus on how people use signage to find their way around locations.  Author Julia Turner says that the great increase in travel, mostly by air, has spurred architects and planners to think carefully about how they direct people, many of them on a tight schedule and unfamiliar with the local language, to move to their desired destinations.  In some circumstances, like driving at speed down the highway, quality signs can be a matter of life and death.  

The mobility of the post-War era explains why signage has proliferated and improved, but to me the real interest is in how these systems are bettered.  Placards on the wall represent only one example of the indicators by which we navigate.  Humans can also sense environmental zones, which is why we go to a building's high-roofed multi-story lobby to look for the elevators.  That big lobby also serves as a mental centerpoint when walking around the rest of building, whether or not it is actually centrally positioned.  Also a sign can't help if it hangs in the wrong place or contains no relevant information.  This is why hospitals have big red exterior drive-thrus for patients needing emergency treatment and no banners and arrows outside for those visiting the dentist on the twelfth floor.  For these reasons specialists in directions do not refer to their craft as "sign-making" but "wayfinding."

Slate's series does more than satisfies my appetite for visual analysis, but it chooses New York and London as two of its test cases!  Why is Penn Station so confusing?  How can anyone get from A to B in London town without an A to Zed?  The Legible London project might make it possible.  Bonus: The pilot program(me) by the Mayor's office follows the incremental testing and rollout methods advocated by Michael Blastland in Analysis last week on BBC Radio 4.  Art, design, podcasts, Anglo, American  -- trifecta!  Did I mention I am not the mathematical one in this couple?

 

One of the Legible London signs on Oxford Street.  Image from wayfinding firm Applied Information Group (AIG).

A Happy Journey

A short demonstration of Singaporean transportation, manners, and humor.  The MRT system shuttles thousands of people around the island everyday on three (soon to be four) efficient, safe, and air-conditioned subway lines.  Of course, nothing here is really very old so the niceties of daily commuting have not been firmly entrenched.  To help, LCD televisions in various stations play the music video posted above to instruct straphangers about how to behave on the train or the bus.  It's a funny example of the nanny-state chiding visible around Singapore, but I wish London or New York occasionally tried to encourage a few more public-transport pleasantries.

The advisement features the Singaporean television actor Gurmit Singh in his role as Phua Chu Kang of "PCK Pte Ltd."  His gold chain, creepy mole, bushy wig, and yellow gumboots distinguish him as a Chinese contractor on the make, an uneducated type called an "Ah Beng" in Singlish.  Good to know that contractors are well regarded the world over.  Phua Chu Kang also warned Singaporeans about SARS (YouTube link) in 2003.

National Railway Museum, York

The Great Hall of the National Railway Museum holds train engines from Britain, Japan, and China. Some of the rolling stock hails from the nineteenth century.

During previous visits to York, I have always been too busy with research to stop in to the National Railway Museum, despite all the good press it receives. Fortunately, one of my stays here finally included a Sunday, which forces me to take a break from church visits (I was raised much too properly to wander the aisles staring upwards and scrutinizing the profiles of vault ribs as a vicar delivers his homily). I decided instead to apply my medieval mind to something much more modern.

Despite the obvious hypocrisy, this art historian find train enthusiasts to be very boring creatures overly concerned about defunct institutions and outdated technology. However, the museum takes care to tell how the history of train travel in Britain, and worldwide, changed leisure, trade, politics, and industry. Railroads opened up all sorts of opportunities and their historical course includes sites for everyone's interests. That and the place is full of huge locomotives that are big, heavy, expensive, powerful, and go faster and faster and faster. I admit I handed control of my afternoon over to childish enthusiasms, but I condoned my glee by reminding myself that I was tech-gawking at rolling stock, not high-powered war machines. Below are some photos. It's a little heavy on boy material (locomotives), but I assure everyone that I did take the time to see the beautifully appointed Royal carriages dating back to Queen Victoria.

The National Railway museum sits behind York's passenger terminal in what used to be the York Freight Depot Goods Warehouse for the Northeastern Railway Company.

The Duchess of Holland was built in 1938 and streamlined with ultra-sleek cladding, but all of its style was removed during World War II. Its shape and colors were only restored this year.

The NRM collection continues to expand. Here in "The Workshop" conservators labor to return the famous Flying Scotsman steam engine to working order.

The Mallard set the current world speed record for a steam-powered train in 1938: 126 mph.

The electric turntable at the center of the Great Hall helped trains at York station turn around from 1954 until the end of steam service in 1968. The museum holds daily demonstrations.