ArticleKey #1: Sidewalks

My phone suggested that I should turn left, then go straight for 900 meters. The problem with the suggestion was that the road ahead looked like one on the above picture. I gasped involuntarily: “No sidewalks?!” but had to qualify the question-statement, because it took that road only several minutes to transform into the following hub

Still no “side” whatsoever but plenty of “walks”, people rubbing shoulders with cars darting up and down the street. To complicate matters just a little bit more, a number of cyclists decided to join the party - a rather unusual development for North American and most European (apart from, maybe, the Netherlands and Denmark) countries but a very routine picture for the Asian continent.  Following the phone's suggestion, under the circumstances, looked very much like courting disaster - ignoring it likely meant wasting my event ticket and starting the trip on the wrongest possible foot. That “Hobson's choice” meant that I was in for a very special experience.

When one is used to the conventional “roads for cars, curbs-protected sidewalks for pedestrians, special lanes for cyclists” formula, participating in the above-described "traffic triad" is indeed quite an experience for any first timer. Bigger and more centrally located roads with sidewalks don't alter that experience too much because, in that case, cyclists follow pedestrians to the sidewalks. In other words, pedestrians - seemingly the most vulnerable member of the triad - are literally never left alone!

To avoid getting hurt or hurting others, every piece of that road puzzle needs a very particular mindset. Apart from hoping and praying (that might make one feel better, even if it doesn't help much), literally everybody present - be it a pedestrian, a cyclist, or a car driver - has to be fully aware of the surroundings at all times. Practically speaking, it means a lot of non-verbal communication and frequent eye contact. In other words, Japanese people are used, almost from the cradle, to pay a lot of attention to each other, to anticipate each other's reactions, and to make necessary adjustments and concessions, however small they might be. Eventually, those practices translate into developing a genuine interest in other people - or, at least, imitating it so skillfully that, for all practical purposes, the end result is essentially the same. There are some 21st-century-induced exceptions but even those are only partial, as well as few and far between. One such exception is riding a train.