Some impressions about Tokyo.







I would to say some impressions about this City and this Country. Please be patient if you are not agree, but these ones are from a short stay of 6 months here as an exchange student.

Tokyo City is like other big cities, a place where the living rhythm is too fast, where the people should take care about the time’s sense, because obviusly, there are too much people and the distances to do are very large. However, one important factor on this kind cities’s living is the train and subway system which brings to habitants a comfortable, secure and fast way to travel to it’s destiny (workplace, home or restplace, etc.); In respect to Tokyo’s train and subway system, it’s larger than Mexico City’s one, but the main diference is that while Mexico City’s subway system (called ‘Metro’) is operated by the city government, Tokyo’s train and subway system is operated by multiple private companies. However… to use these trains and the ‘Metro’ is the same thing only with other kind of users, but I will write later about they.

One of the things that I like too much is the safety on the streets (and anywhere), which is something dificult to say about other countries including mine. About the reason for it, I really don’t know, but may be that the living-level of Japanese people is too hight, so there isn’t extremly poornees which may be a main factor for the insecureness in other countries. But personally I think that that the main reason because we can enjoy this situation is the idiosyncrasy of japenese people, which imposes a hard discipline about the respect to the laws, the enviroment and the people, something which is grandiose in my viewpoint.

This city services are something which I admire, because they are well organized ones. For example, the garbage colecting service asks to their users to separate the garbage in two kinds: burnable and not burnable and recyclable ones, in this way to keep clean the city is very easy and also contribuites to reduce the air and ground pollution. These kind of things, like the population cooperation and respect to these rules, do possible to get a clean and nice city like Tokyo is now.

About the city’s people, I should say that at least at UEC surroundings, there are too much foreing people, so I think the native people are accustomed to say us every day. However, one of the main troubles for foreing (and mainly for recently arrived people like me) is the communication, due the most of the information at the streets is writed in japanese languaje and alphabeths, in that way is very dificult for foreing people to undestand any information, so we need to ask to the people about that, but at least in my case, I can’t speak japanese languaje currently, and however in the least cases I know some basic questions, I not able to undestand the people’s answers, so it’s not useful for now.

About the weather at Tokyo, I think it’s very variable, there are some days when the heat and the humidity are high they became a bad combination for me; but other days, the strong wind and the cloudy sky cause the air temperature fall quickly. That kind of weather is not good for mi health, because I can get sick frequently.

Finally, I should say that one of my home’s things that I really miss is the Mexican food, because though I try to cook, there are some basic ingredients like tortilla which are very difficult or expensive to get at Japan. So if you are interested in send me a gift, please send me 1 kilogram of tortillas (just made) and a little of salsa, and I will be thanked for all my live… jejeje.



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Moisés Salinas Rosales [msrosales@acm.org]