Dilatory

Well, it seems that in my previous post, I spoke too soon. Here's another word of the day post!

Dilatory, something or someone characterized by procrastination or tardiness, or something that tends to or is intended to cause delay.

Well, in Japan, things tend to run fairly smoothly and efficiently. This is most clearly seen with the public transportation system. There are times posted for trains which are followed near precisely for the most part. The times that it does run late though... are due to problems that the trains may run into, such as people jumping off the train platform and directly into the path of the train, i.e.- suicide.


http://www.youmaker.com/

This is an exaggeration, from the movie Suicide Club, a.k.a.- Suicide Circle, but it does get across the idea of train suicides in Japan... without me showing videos that I found of actual train suicides.

From what I've found regarding train suicide statistics... there aren't really any that I could find in English. The majority are statistics regarding overall suicide rates. In general though, there are about 30,000 suicides committed in Japan every year, and this figure tends to rise with increased economic problems. People commit suicide using various methods, including jumping into the path of oncoming trains. A statistic to consider in regards to this is that about 10% of those who attempt this method of suicide actually end up surviving. If they felt that things looked bad before, the change to their physical condition probably exacerbates their depression. Also, I couldn't find an exact figure on this that I would trust, but the train stations also charge the family of the suicide victim with clean up costs. The figures that I found mentioned that it was around 100 million yen, roughly 1 million dollars to pay for these costs, which is what caused me to doubt the veracity of those numbers.

To relate this to dilatory though, when suicides do occur on the tracks, this will obviously delay the otherwise punctual train system of Japan. So whenever notices of the train being delayed pop up, a suicide is most likely the problem behind it.

Searching for this information was quite depressing and disturbing. It made me recall my stay in Japan again, and although I did not ever witness a person taking their life by train, one of my friends there did. He's a student from Korea, and during his first month of study in Japan, he saw a man jump off the train platform and into the path of a train at a local station. He told me that he was quite traumatized by the experience. He was also hit by a car while bicycling over there, but fortunately it was not a fatal accident. Nonetheless, he experienced a couple of situations that I and many others would never want to experience in a foreign country, much less our own.

In the case of this post, I believe that the less visual material I put up, the better.=) I would certainly feel better anyway.