It's always either the pre-recorded overly-happy female announcer or the incredibly unmotivated 30-to-40-something male driver over the PA. There is no in between. Especially the くだっっっさい
@jager64xxx xxxpanzer oh, and while you're at that don't forget some racial slur or personal attack, while trying to sound mature in the most condescending way!
Haha where do you find those? Here in Aichi they just read their text in English with a very heavy accent as there aren't pre-recorded messages... But it's quite the game to guess what they are trying to say!
@@Windvern Kyoto station is all automated now but I heard a brilliant announcement there for the Thunderbird back in 2015. Something about "the train will have an 8 car so please wait in the place 1 beginning and 8 ending place"
My favourite so far was a train conductor in Osaka who first got questions from a bunch of English speaking tourists and afterwards some Chinese tourists during Yodogawa Fireworks Festival and - probably in an attempt to help those tourists find their place to the river, used the PA system to yell: "GETTO OFFU HI, PURISU! SENKU YUUU! PURISU CHEENJI REDDO RUAINO! REDDO! TOMATO! SHI SHI!" (the "shi shi" was probably an attempt to say 谢谢 haha).
Rural-ish limited express trains are even more fun. After hearing the same long announcement in japanese, english and mandarin, the driver will start listing what time the train will stop at each station, which carridges are reserved/non-reserved, that the train is non-smoking, where the toilet is and so on.. This usually goes on until the train stops at the next station, at which point the cycle repeats. Although people on the train are quiet, I quickly found out headphones are mandatory...
Oh yes the messages that repeat over and over and over and over again nonstop! Make it stop! Edit: Like for example (outside of Japan) "it is prohibited to engage in sales inside this train, guards are allowed to seize any contents being illegaly sold" - As there is someone right in front of you selling things.
Way another context but... I sail every summer on the Gulf of Finland, and my small sailing boat has a VHF radio. So I have to monitor channel 16 for possible emergency calls. Also regular weather information and navigational warning broadcast notifications are given on that channel. Calls are supposed to be short and to the point in order not to keep others (possible emergencies but also regular traffic) from using the channel. So the Finnish coastal radio network's operator, articulating clearly, and quickly: "All ships, all ships, all ships, this is Turku Radio, Turku Radio. Weather information and navigational warnings on Turku Radio working channels. Turku Radio." And everybody knows which working channel to tune into because they are listed on navigational charts (different channels on different areas, so it wouldn't make sense to list the channels in the announcement.) The Estonian coastal radio network's operator, very slowly, sounding like they're half asleep: "All ships, all ships, all ships, this is Tallinn Radio, Tallinn Radio calling. Weather information and navigational warnings are available on the frequency 1650 kHz and Tallinn Radio working channels 01, 03, 05, 07, 20, 26, 27 and 62. Tallinn Radio. Kõik laevad, kõik laevad, kõik laevad, siin Tallinn Raadio, Tallinn Raadio, Tallinn Raadio. Ilmteaded ning navigatsiooniinformatsioonid on kuulata sagedusel 1650 kHz ning Tallinn Raadio töökanalitel 01, 03, 05, 07, 20, 26, 27 ja 62. Tallinn Raadio." (Having listened to those broadcasts for ten summers, it was just as I was writing this that I realized they must be saying 'kõek laevad', which means, 'all ships'. Over the radio, it sounds like 'diklaavad' and I'd just supposed maybe that was some Estonian radio vocabulary I wasn't familiar with.) Last summer, I was happily surprised because there was a new operator on Tallinn Radio and they had a clear voice and they didn't list the effing working channels in two languages each time. But then the original operator returned.
My friends in shinkansen: oi, we got to get off, we're in okayama. me: nah man, I'm pretty sure it said fukuyama. person next to us who happens to also speak our language: no bro, I heard okayama too. me: [checks google maps], we in fukuyama bois.
it took me 3 months of being in Japan to realize the doors opened left and right relative to the direction the train was going. Total big brained move.
@@BudderB0y2222 Every time you get on a local train you gotta pray to the densha-gods that train announcements are a woman's voice because they're almost always the pre-recorded announcements and actually understandable. Anything else is impossible to hear and not worth the effort to decipher
In the UK you can generally understand what they are saying on trains. English is my first language though, maybe it would be incomprehensible to me if English were not my native language.
What absolutely boggles my mind is that I can be on the other side of the planet in Japan and be able to talk to my family in Canada with complete clarity, while the train announcements are wholly incomprehensible like this. This was so accurate lmao
Probably the same everywhere. There was a train announcement on a train up to London and then you could hear all the Spanish tourists in one of the carriages asking each other in Spanish what the announcement was saying.
Used to ride Musashino all the time (lived near Musashi Urawa station for 3 years until this April) and I don't know... and I am both confused and sad that I probably have been missing out on something.
I was just traveling in Japan for two weeks and when we passed Ebisu station for the first time I laughed in public like a gormless dolt. It was on the Yamanote Line so it was a clear, automated announcement sadly.
I just discovered your channel and "Advanced Japanese Lesson #3 / 上級日本語：レッスン3" from 3.5 years ago randomly ended up on my feed. After laughing for a long time at the train announcement thought to see what is the latest video you made...and freaking deja vu!!
WHY HAVE YOU JUST NOW BEEN RECOMMENDED IN MY FEED? And I'm pretty sure you were even recommended because I'm pregnant and the healthcare video was most relatable?! I'm sitting here binging your videos and hurting myself laughing so hard. Thank youuu!
I am genuinely suprised your channel isn't as popular as I thought itd be. Your videos are incredibly well written, the jokes are terrific and it's fantastic Japanese practice! Your little community of subscribers thanks you for your service Dogen! 頑張って下さい！
It's not *that* surprising unfortunately. Despite the excellent content, in order to understand Dogen's humour, you have to have either a fairly good level of Japanese to understand the jokes OR have experienced Japan in some kind of way (or both, preferably), because it's not something your normal Joe can understand and relate immediately. People like us who can are quite rare, if you consider the total amount of RU-vid users as a whole. So we can say it's almost a niche sort of comedy, but for the few people who are in the know about Japanese culture to this context, it's our rare, precious gold nugget ☺️
@@LadyPrincessDiana I don't think you need either of those things. His videos have English subtitles, after all, and a lot of comedy is universal. I'm only a beginner in Japanese and have never been to the country, but I enjoy Dogen's videos partly for the exposure to Japanese and information about the Japanese language but mostly for the universal appeal of the humour. Unclear train announcements, for example, are the bane of travellers all over the world, the UK being no exception.
maybe its just me but the 東海道線 never had any real people announcements, just automated announcements lol. but i did hear this when i went on the 青梅線 (they also had manual doors)
So good. In Kyoto it's different; the announcement is prerecorded and bilingual. To my delight sometime the voice seems to excited about the next station and fully assumes we the passengers are as well. Omg everyone the next station is かつら!かつらです isn't it great?!
This.... and IN EVERY FREAKING BUS!!! I only had one over enthusiastic bus driver once who was just like... saying so many things like "Thank you for riding with me today, the weather is beautiful! Oh it's a bumpy road"
@@MatthiasBlume Even better when the pre-recorded announcement that gives plenty enough information is overwritten by a live announcement with 30% of the clarity.
Japanese recorded announcement: you get nervous. Then, English recorded announcement. You: good. Now I know what they just said. Then the driver says more stuff in Japanese than the announcer and you have no clue
😂 Hillarious. When I lived in Norway, I counted it as an accomplishment once I could finally understand the Norwegian train announcers. Glad to see the struggle is the same elsewhere 😉
Made me really happy that I was either with my school group who knew where to go or when by self, I could just memorize the stop numbers from the map above the doors while in Japan because nearly incomprehensible speaker quality is a lot worse when you only have 3 college quarters of experience with the language at the time. Also when by myself I mostly went to Akiba so I memorized that route fast.
I’m reading a book called Straphanger about public transit around the world. I read the following sentence and searched RU-vid for an example. “Over a microphone, the conductor made a short speech in the affectedly nasal, subservient tones employed for public announcements in Japan.” Thanks!😀
There is a band called SUPER BELL"Z that is inspired by classic train announcements using a unique, high-pitched tone of voice to make them more audible. I wish this kind of style still existed in Japan.
I don't speak Japanese so I just cannot understand most of the announcements but I was in my nighttime commute back home through the Yamanote line, something happened before Tokyo station and the train abruptly stopped. After that, the driver got in charge of the announcements instead of using the recordings. He would not stop talking (I was surprised by his energy).
When I heard the textbook version I thought "hm.. there's something missing" and then the actual came next and I was like "yep, that's it. THAT DRAWL WAS MISSING." 😂😂 This brings me back the time I lived there and you can really tell when the train conductor is tired 😂
@@MichelleTopham they're prerecorded here too, HOWEVER whenever there's a problem they need to announce (train late etc) it's a real person talking and it's always just a bunch of noises that's impossible to understand 😅
They can't always be prerecorded due to compatibility issues, I believe. For trains within a country there is usually no excuse, but I took a train from Zagreb to Frankfurt a.M. and during that time the car I was in was decoupled and recoupled about four or five times. I mean, I guess they could record them, but they probably think it is too bothersome. They usually give you a printed travel plan on your seat, though. Not to mention whether the Croatian locomotives from the 70-ies can even interface with the announcement system in the rather new Austrian cars. In my case, the announcements only started properly once we've entered Austria, and they were all by mumbly drivers/conductors.
@@2712animefreak shouldn't be any need for every car to have it pre-recorded. It seems way more efficient to have the locomotive send out the audio to the each car.
Goodness yes. It was a real terror after how loud and clear Korean trains are (I was studying there but visited Japan) I speak more Japanese but understood the Korean trains better! The words were so muddled I started counting stops using the map!
Seems like this is a universal experience across all countries. Just saw a skit about this very thing from a German youtuber about German train announcements
