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Writing this from Tokyo, my work place for the last 2 years now. I’m waiting for an estate agent to sign a contract for my new rental house. Meeting time was 12pm on Sunday but I’m 20 mins early. My journey from a repetitive late comer to now today was a miracle. Let me tell you how.
The year is 2019 late November, I have a task to give to my junior a local fresh graduate and wanted to ask him to come on a Saturday. I know I’m cruel to do that but it was necessary and 1 week prior I was in office this was just his turn. I asked him in advance and asked to take off on any working day he prefers and agree only if he wants. I wished i had such treatment in India.
So while we discussed other work I brought up this and asked him to come Saturday afternoon for the task. He asked the exact time i casually said 11am but you can come a bit late too mentioned our Indian liberty. He took out his phone, opened google maps and put the arrival time as 10:50am to the office and saw the exact time he had to leave home on Saturday. And boom Saturday he was exactly at 10:50am, 10 mins early on a day he could have been easily relaxed.
After spending years in Mumbai and running to catch local trains for the last 2 years I’ m getting used to the same rush in Tokyo & suburban metro trains. But I never see everyone running madly here and everyone is on time, people and the trains. The line I travel now has just 2 tracks and they run both slow and fast trains on them with no separate tracks. In Mumbai l was seldom on time anywhere and trains had various reasons to defend the daily delays. The sharp contrast confused me. What was the difference?
But with that Saturday episode the mystery was solved. We people focus more on departure time in India where as they focus on the arrival time a lot. There will be exception both places but you know what i mean. Our trains just try to reach on the departure time and not bother much about punctuality, on the other hand Japanese are more focussed on departure so come early, take enough rest and just depart on time. Also planning differs we plan for the best cases while they keep extra time in hand. I was shocked to see even all buses coming to an in-between stops on near perfect time and departing on the time displayed on stop amazing.
This doesn’t mean they are perfect, I experienced 2 major delays due to an accident. One these events are rare here; safety of everyone is of much more importance and second even during such issues they declare the correct time for resumption of services and do it exactly.
Coming back to present it is now 11:58 am my Indian counterpart will arrive now. Meanwhile, I got time to write a small article which I could never have written.
PS: Thank you The Print team & SG for providing better news that keeps me updated about exact events about home when most other sources are cluttered and biased. Appreciate it Thank you.
Also read: Spectators banned at Tokyo Olympics as Japan capital sees fresh Covid surge
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
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