STRANGE STRAINS OF TRAINS
Japan’s railway enthusiasts are endlessly unique and uniquely obsessed — even about station lunches,
Just as Japan’s trains are in a league of their own, so too are its trainspotters.
This country, where a 20-second delay leads to profuse apologies on the platforms and conductors bow to passengers as they enter the train car, has taken train nerd-dom to a new level.
Sure, there are the vanilla trainspotters who take photos of various trains around the country. They’re called tori-tetsu. (Tori means to take, and tetsu means train.) But there are also nori-tetsu, people who enjoy travelling on trains; yomi-tetsu, those who love to read about trains, especially train schedules; oto-tetsu, the people who record the sound of trains; sharyotetsu, fans of train design; eki-tetsu, people who study stations; and even ekiben-tetsu, aficionados of the exquisite bento lunch boxes sold at stations.
“It’s really hard to find people here who hate taking trains,” said Junichi Sugiyama, a journalist who writes about trains and the author of train-related books including How to Enjoy Railroads From Train Schedules.
Take Tetsuya Suzuki, a 48-year-old yomi-tetsu who has more than 660 volumes of train timetable books dating back to April 1980. He uses the latest edition — yes, Japan still prints phone-book-size schedules — to map out imaginary journeys just for fun.
“I can do my hobby anywhere,” Suzuki said in his apartment, where the living room featured a large train set — he said it was for his young son, who was wearing a sweater with trains on it — and the balcony offered a view of the tracks. “Whether I’m travelling or at home, I can always have my timetable book with me.”
His skill is somewhat in demand. A TV program trying to get to seven famous ramen stores around the country in 10 days asked him for advice on the most efficient way to do it — and while the stores were open. Suzuki went through 20-odd different routes before coming up with the perfect itinerary.
The Japanese train system is a microcosm of Japan itself, says Takashi Noda, the author of books including The Way of Tetsu: Riding, Photographing and Making Carefree Stopovers.
“Trains and train systems appeal to Japanese people as trains are operated on time and accurately,” Noda said.
For Takafumi Mochizuki, a 40-year-old radio scriptwriter, it’s the precision of the lunch boxes that is alluring. He always loved eating “ekiben” — a combination of the Japanese words for “station” and “lunch box” — but now it’s a serious pastime.
“They use local ingredients, so they’re different all over Japan, and they have to figure out how to keep the ingredients good for some hours,” Mochizuki said at the gargantuan Tokyo Station after a day riding the rails. He’d been out for more than 12 hours and had eaten four ekiben in that time: There was the box containing clams he ate for breakfast; the fisherman’s meal box containing fish and squid that he ate at his first stop; the sea urchin and clam bento from his second; and finally a whale-meat bento.
Mochizuki returned from his journey with four other ekiben, which he planned to take home for dinner with his wife, who isn’t wild about his hobby.
“I think my wife and my friends think it’s strange,” Mochizuki said.