Joined: 30 Jan 2004 Posts: 2247 Location: SF Bay Area Country:
Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2005 3:43 am Post subject:
atata wrote:
u have any ideas abt how to get to a college in japan??????
Visit your local colleges in Singapore.
I would expect that some schools have exchange programs with colleges in Japan. With that information, you can look up those schools in Japan and see about applying directly.
-PCM
so r u like into computer stuff is it ... i mean like setting up new tech operations in japan ... would be interesting ...
for eg - i worked with japanese and chinese people out here, very very different from each other ... japanese were always way cooler .. i mean calm and professional .. chinese also very professional but always got a feel as if they wanted to prove that they r also good in work .. very competitive indeed in what ever they do .. was very interesting to note these difference in them
japanese were also very good at work but found them much more comfortable to work with ..
I repeat this is just my experience .. so not signing any legal docs on it
Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 3:06 am Post subject: Train Derails in Japan
Terrible.
Japan Eyes Speed in Train Derail Probe
By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer
AMAGASAKI, Japan - Investigators focused on the 23-year-old train driver's lack of experience and excessive speed as possible factors in a commuter train derailment Monday that was Japan's deadliest rail accident in four decades.
Rescuers worked into the night trying to free survivors caught in wreckage left by the train smashing into an apartment building in western Japan, killing at least 57 people and injuring 441. It was not clear if any bystanders or apartment residents were among the victims.
Early Tuesday, rescuers working under floodlights pulled a conscious but seriously injured 46-year-old woman from a train car and rushed her to a hospital, police official Hiroshi Yamatani said.
Two men were trapped in the same car. They were conscious and receiving emergency medical care but rescuers were hampered by worries about a gasoline leak, said Amagasaki Fire Department official Shohei Matsuda. Other people were in the wreckage but they were feared dead.
Takamichi Hayashi said his elder brother, 19-year-old Hiroki, might be among those still in the wreck. He said Hiroki had called their mother twice on a mobile phone from inside one of the train cars hours after the crash but remained unaccounted for.
"He told my mother: 'I'm in pain. I'm not going to make it,'" Hayashi said.
Crowded with 580 passengers, the seven-car train left the rails at 9:18 a.m. on a curve near Amagasaki, about 250 miles west of Tokyo, then plowed through an automobile and slammed into the wall of the building's parking garage. Two of the five derailed train cars were flattened.
Officials said no cause had been ruled out but added that investigators suspected speed and the driver's less than a year on the job.
The driver — identified as Ryujiro Takami, 23 — was unaccounted for.
He got his train operator's license last May. A month later, he overshot a station and was issued a warning, railway officials and police said. Passengers said he also stopped too far past a station platform Monday just before the crash.
Tsunemi Murakami, safety director for train operator West Japan Railway Co., said it had not been determined how fast the train was traveling.
A surviving crew member told police he "felt the train was going faster than usual," public broadcaster NHK said.
That echoed comments from passengers who speculated the driver might have been speeding to make up for time lost when he overshot the previous station by 25 feet and had to back up. The train was nearly two minutes behind schedule, media reports said.
The crash occurred on a curve with a speed limit of 43 mph. Murakami estimated the train would have had to be traveling at 82 mph to have jumped the track purely because of excessive speed.
Some stretches of track in Japan have safety systems designed to stop trains at any sign of trouble without requiring drivers to take emergency action. But transport ministry officials said the automatic braking system along the stretch of track where the train crashed is among the oldest in Japan and can't halt trains traveling at high speeds.
Outside experts predicted investigators would find a combination of factors to blame.
"There are very few train accidents in Japan in which a train has flipped just because it was going too fast. There might have been several conditions at work — speed, winds, poor train maintenance or aging rails," Kazuhiko Nagase, a train expert who is a professor at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology, told NHK.
"For the train to flip, it had to be traveling at an extremely high speed," Nagase said.
Murakami said investigators also found evidence of rocks on the tracks, but hadn't determined whether that contributed to the crash.
Transport Minister Kazuo Kitagawa told reporters he would order all of Japan's railway operators to conduct safety inspections in the coming days.
"It's tragic," Kitagawa said at the scene. "We have to investigate why this horrible accident happened."
Deadly train accidents are rare in Japan, which is home to one of the world's most complex, efficient and heavily traveled rail networks. Monday's crash was the worst since 161 people died in a three-train crash in 1963 at Tsurumi, outside Tokyo.
Joined: 10 Jul 2003 Posts: 1249 Location: USA Country:
Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:49 am Post subject:
Sounds too uncomfortably reminiscent of those Madrid train bombings in March 2004. Those reports of the train travelling along too fast is especially fishy; I mean, if you've ever been privy to Japanese mass transit, if a train's supposed to arrive at a specific time, best believe it'll arrive at that time with no + or - seconds to spare.
In any case, they better get to the bottom of this one.
Joined: 06 Oct 2004 Posts: 700 Location: Hawaii! Country:
Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:56 am Post subject:
read the news reports myself, and i don't think it has anything to do with foul play. the driver was very young (23), and cited a few times for infractions, missing a stop, etc. on the stop just before the crash, he missed the stop by about 25ft. had to back up the train, and lost valuable time. they're thinking he was trying to make up for lost time and speeding (he was two minutes late - which in hawaii translates to the #52 "wahiawa-circle island" bus coming two HOURS late.)
feel really bad for those people. i have some friends in osaka, and trying to get in touch with them right now.
Joined: 06 Oct 2004 Posts: 700 Location: Hawaii! Country:
Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 8:07 am Post subject:
oh most definitely. but they are trying to check if there was anything else involved. according to the news, the train needed to slow down to apprx 40 mph to make that turn. they estimate that the speed would have to have been 85 mph to skip the tracks, so....
i was just surprised that it was manually operated! i thought it was completely run automated, and the human in there was just to make sure everything was ok.
but then again, it mentioned that particular line was pretty old, and in most of the newer tracks, there is an automated system that will automatically slow the train down. the tracks he was on was too old, and did not have that system.
When you think over it it's somewhat ironic that the worst derailing accident for several decades wasn't caused by an earthquake, but by the human factor (as usual).
Last I read was that 80 km/h were allowed and he was going some 130. 50 km/h above the allowed speed? Ow...
At least, as mean as this may sound, it wasn't in Tokyo, or I'd be worrying sick now.
I saw the News at NHK yesterday and was so SHOCKED to see it!! it was horrible.
it reminds me of UK train accident occurred in the year 2000. After that they limit the train speed's restriction for couple of months. I remembered it took me 5 hours to get my butt from Newcastle to London.
Yep I know, but see, I don't know anyone in Osaka, if it would have been Tokyo... oi... *wouldn't have slept at all* It's bad what happened, but I'm glad it didn't hit anyone I know or care for. Tokyo's somewhat sacred ground for me, then comes the rest of Japan. And seeing the footage of the wreck on TV still makes me cringe.
Now, if it were a trainload of death-row criminals............
Indeed, I'm not saying it's good or anything. It's already freaking me out since it's in Japan. If it would have been in France or even here, in Austria, I'd have thought "bad" and marked it off. But well, since I'm somewhat personallyand emotionally attached... oi...
I mean if I run through the "what if"... oioi... then people I know quite good could have been on it on their way to school or university... meh... now I have to get that out of my head before going to work...
Still... *shudders at the images of the wreckage*
OT (due to the death-row-train-thing) You know... I'm actually against death penalty, in general... And when that guy killed that 7 year old girl in Nara prefecture last year, I was like "Hang him". 7 years... Naoko's niece is 5 today... *would kill anyone who'd touch her* I'd actually say that such an accident would be too easy for anyone on the death-row. Easy way out. All too easy. I'd burn them on a stake or something... Errr... anyway... back to the topic.
As I was saying... it's different in general since it's in Japan. Since well, the victims get faces easily, they stop being an anonymous mass far too easily. Damn emotions... *sighs, goes away*
I live in Tokyo and rely on the trains everyday. The train system here is state of the art and usually very punctual. The only exceptions are bad weather and suicides.
I heard that train drivers' compensations are heavily determined by their trains' punctuality. The pressure and motivation of being punctual probably made him speed up the train at the accident site, but it came with a cost - it has cut short innocent lives, many of these of young people on their way to school.
The offices of JR West has been raided for investigations and there is now talks that the top dogs there will resign.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Register
Log in
u have any ideas abt how to get to a college in japan?????? 
it was horrible.
