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The story
A post showing a photo of a packed train in central Tokyo, captioned with the anguished cry “I can’t take this anymore,” sparked a wide-ranging discussion about commuting on 5ch’s Nanimo Jikkyo (Live News) board. Comments compared it to trains in India, brought up the frequent groping incidents on the Saikyo Line, and threw out concrete ideas like commuting by moped or making train cars double-decker. The thread also spiraled into debates over why remote work hasn’t caught on and whether it’s worth living in the city center, with one comment even noting that “Tokyo’s prosperity is propped up by the sacrifices of the people commuting into it.”
This is what I have to do every single day until I retire!
I work this hard every day and we’re still basically dead last in the country for quality of life!
Somebody help me, please!!
Source: i.imgur.com / Original post here
What people said
Go ride on the roof first, then tell me it's the same.
It costs parking money, so it's not exactly 'the best.'
It's a bad social trend that nobody just says 'the train was packed so I couldn't make it in time' and lets it go at that.
That's exactly the kind of thing young people should be raising on social media — before complaining about hating drinking parties.
Well, for people who already treat overtime as normal, companies just need to create a culture where it's fine to clock in anytime between 8 and 11.
It was solved for a while 🤗
It is the best — you get to legally listen to music, and as for parking, if you rent an apartment that comes with a spot, it's cheaper than a commuter pass.
There's no apartment that convenient in the city center.
Double-decker cars can structurally only fit two doors, and the stairs end up super narrow, so boarding and getting off takes forever.
Running them in the city would cause constant delays, so it's a no-go.
It's possible, but fares would jump and you wouldn't be able to stand, so the total passenger capacity might actually end up lower.
Dunno if it counts as the city center, but when I lived in Ota Ward, I could use the apartment's parking for 1,000 yen a month.
Ota Ward isn't the city center, and besides, we're talking about parking fees at your workplace, not where you live.
Because too many people slack off, so companies keep banning it one by one.
There's a huge banner in Ikebukuro warning people about gropers, lol.
Bringing up 'the workplace' now is moving the goalposts, lol. If you're picking a bike, of course you'd look for parking at work too. And with a moped you can often park it at station bike lots as well, so overall a scooter still beats the train.
No, we were talking about commuting from the start, so there's no goalpost-moving here.
Monthly station bike lots are rarely available, and once you factor in gas money you'll easily blow past the cost of a commuter pass — and barely any company allows commuting by car or motorbike in the first place.
At the end of the day it's only about 100,000 yen a month different from the suburbs.
The city center isn't exactly easy to live in either, though.
Bet they're getting stung by Times Car [a car-sharing service] rates right about now.
Well, network services like that go down from even a minor prank, and data leaks happen too.
Really? I live near Todai-mae (right by the University of Tokyo) now, and it's not inconvenient at all.
That's not the city center though.
Though all the good parts get taken by the rich.
Isn't it kind of hollow if the only thing you get out of living like a slave is bragging rights over people in the countryside?
People outside Tokyo actually live more like human beings.
・There are chances to meet the opposite sex
・There are events
・There are stylish shops
Of course every young person except the total nobodies ("mukya" — slang for people with zero romantic prospects) heads to Tokyo.
Osaka, Fukuoka, and Nagoya all have that stuff too, so there's no need to specifically pick Tokyo.
Background and key points of this discussion
According to a Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism survey, congestion rates on major train lines have dropped to around 150%, but the crowding still feels intense in practice, and awareness campaigns against groping continue on some lines, including the Saikyo Line. The thread also brought up making train cars double-decker, but in reality this isn’t used on commuter lines in the greater Tokyo area, since it would lengthen boarding times and disrupt train intervals. Some commenters claimed remote work “hasn’t caught on,” but the rate of work-from-home varies widely by industry, and it isn’t the case that companies have uniformly banned it. The debate over whether to live in the city center or the suburbs also largely comes down to personal values — whether you prioritize commute time or housing costs — so it isn’t a question with a simple right answer.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nanimo Jikkyo G) thread “[Image] Tokyo resident: “AAAAH! I can’t take it anymore! I can’t take packed trains anymooOOOOORE!!!”“.
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