Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Overhead in Japan

So today I was walking to work as usual, and at a busy crosswalk in front of the station, I noticed 3 policemen - each at a different corner. Then I notice 2 people at each corner (8 in total) each holding a little flag with some japanese written on it that I couldn`t completely decipher. I wait at the light, and once it changes the two people at each corner hold the poles of the flags horizontally, letting the flag hang vertically. Half way across the street, I finally realized that they were directing the pedestrians to walk only on the white painted crosswalk, so of course I complied and hopped on the crosswalk and went about my day.

I get to work, and explain the situation to a coworker. He`s 23, fairly smart, fairly open-minded, and has probably been outside of Japan at least once in his life. If not yet, I imagine he`ll venture out eventually. In broken Japanese I say "This morning, at the crossing in front of the station. 3 police. and 8 helping people. why? I`m surprised by so many people" He immediately understands what I`m saying, and his responce was merely "They are there for safety" I`ve been in Japan a year, sometimes there are communication barriers, but in this case I could see that he felt as though the question had been completely answered, so I smirk and continue on with my day.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

that's great, Japan sounds most safe country in the world! Hiromi

12:17 AM  

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