Back seat driver
Today's Saturday Timewatch is inspired by Chris Firth's 1987 photo flic.kr/p/2k5Empp. My photo goes back 6 years almost to the day. It was delight to be able to travel on the rural railway routes of Japan and as often as not you could bag a front seat and watch the road ahead. That of course also takes us back to the era of DMUs in the UK when that was also quite common so long as the driver didn't pull the cab blind down!
This service was the stopper from Takayama to Nagoya. Why is the driver pointing you might ask? No, he is not adjusting the wiper. No, he is not pointing out some passing landmark or interesting bird. It is shisa kanko which translates into English as "pointing and calling". It is one of Japan's rail safety systems, in this case to help concentration and avoid mistakes by pointing at important indicators and calling out the status. Here he has acknowledged there is a crossing ahead and that the way is clear.
Back seat driver
Today's Saturday Timewatch is inspired by Chris Firth's 1987 photo flic.kr/p/2k5Empp. My photo goes back 6 years almost to the day. It was delight to be able to travel on the rural railway routes of Japan and as often as not you could bag a front seat and watch the road ahead. That of course also takes us back to the era of DMUs in the UK when that was also quite common so long as the driver didn't pull the cab blind down!
This service was the stopper from Takayama to Nagoya. Why is the driver pointing you might ask? No, he is not adjusting the wiper. No, he is not pointing out some passing landmark or interesting bird. It is shisa kanko which translates into English as "pointing and calling". It is one of Japan's rail safety systems, in this case to help concentration and avoid mistakes by pointing at important indicators and calling out the status. Here he has acknowledged there is a crossing ahead and that the way is clear.