Ryoji writes
I'm going to write about transportations in Boston. I think we can find something different in other cultures, which we can't get to know easily from books, if we actually live the place. In fact I got to know a lot of things which I didn't know as I lived in Boston. So I will tell you a little something I thought from my experience.
Boston is the place which has the longest history of subway operation in U.S.A. It means the first subway had been running in the city. For that reason, some tunnels seemed very old. Bostonians (people who live in Boston) have called it 'T'. It combined streetcar and subway. Trains run between buildings and there are several stations on the street. There are four lines, they are called by different colors like red, blue, orange and green. We can find the line that we want to use because train bodies are painted in each color.
The T was very useful for me because transportation had developed very much in Boston. I could go everywhere I wanted to go by them. Lines which go up to Government Center (center of the city) were called 'inbound'. The opposite direction was called 'outbound'. Inbound fares were between $1 and $2.50. Unfortunately Inbound rose while I was living there,while Outbound was free all the time. Incidentally, the station located near my house had the highest fare. So I had been using pass cards that I could use in both trains and buses. Pass cards were convenient because otherwise we had to pay the fare by just coins in principle. Actually we can pay it by bills, but I heard motormen kept them in their pocket sometimes.
Many motormen were black people. They looked both tough and friendly. Passengers said 'hello' to motormen when they got on, and 'thank you' when they get off. I really have thought greeting is very important in this country. Even if just say 'hello' and 'thank you'. For example, it is natural that people exchange greetings with staff when they enter a shop.
Passengers enjoyed talking in trains. Some people talked to the motorman. It was unusual to sleep as Japanese do. To my surprise, nobody read comics, they read newspaper or novels if they read. They also seemed to like listening to music by portable recorder (walkman), but most of them were cassette tapes.
I often saw people offer their seats to women and the elderly. I think their custom which was so-called 'Lady first' is embedded in their mind deeply. This is very good point which I could know in trains. It is remarkable that all transportations were good for people who use wheelchairs. All trains had a place for them. All buses had an elevator for them. I think the transportation system was much more comfortable for those people than in Japan. Actually, I saw wheelchair users many times in trains and buses.
Finally, there were no timetables. Trains came once in some minutes. I was very confused with this style because it is unusual in Japan. After several days, however, I got accustomed to this way and I got to like it because I didn't need to care about the time schedule very much.
Thus I could know something I didn't know before from the T and people's life on the T. I liked getting on it because I could see the beautiful view from trains each season.