Since April 2008, the Tokyo Metro has been putting “manner posters” every month inside trains encouraging patrons to mind their manners. I like the simplicity of the illustrations and theme, which goes like “Please do it at (name of place)”. This campaign is on its sixth month and will run for a year which will give us 12 posters, the latest of which is this: “Please do it on the mountain.”: “Please be considerate of other when holding bulky belongings.”

August’s poster is probably the best of the series so far: “Please do it at the beach.”

The Japanese are generally well-mannered people. They have to be, especially those in large urban areas where many facilities have to be shared with many others. (The so-called Tokyo Major Metropolitan Area within a 70-kilometer radius from central Tokyo has over 34 million people.)

Interestingly, most of the bad-mannered people depicted in the posters are young or middle-aged and those looking disapprovingly are old people. Might not be a big deal, as older people usually complain about the deteriorating manners of the younger generation.

See the rest of the posters here: Tokyo Metro Manner Posters.

Think first before trying your luck using children’s train pass, because these JR station masters are very good in catching playful kids, erm, I mean cheating adults. As it turns out, the only thing that prevents cheats from getting caught is the rush hours, but by the time they find themselves entering or coming out of a moderately crowded station the game is over. When used, children’s train passes trigger beeps and flashes that alerts station officers. Asahi.com has the article on this, and the conclusion they came up is that one explanation for this is the stagnating economy. An excerpt of the article follows:

“I wanted to cut down on my daily expenses because I don’t have a job,” a 45-year-old unemployed man told police after he was caught in June at JR Omiya Station in Saitama.

An 18-year-old student, also caught in June, said, “I wanted to save my pocket money.”

In 2006, police took action against 148 people nationwide for taking trains without paying fares at all, sharply up from 40 to 90 between 2003 and 2005, according to the National Police Agency.