Those of who ever have lived in an urban area of Japan just might miss seeing the images above. These are examples of advertisement posters for magazines that are displayed inside the commuter trains in Japan. Japanese-packed commuter trains are well known, thanks to Freddie and Bowie. I was a big fan of them both, and was so excited when they used the Japanese scenes in Queen's "Under Pressure" by the way.
This train shown below is not one of the packed trains but you can see some of the advertisement posters hanging down from the ceiling. These are called "Nakazuri 中吊り meaning inside (of train) hanging ads.
In the bus and trains in Chicago we see advertisement posters on the walls above the seats. Japanese trains have those too of course, and stickers on the windows and the train car-size ads like we see in the US as well. But I haven't yet seen these Nakazuri ads anywhere in the US so far.
This is clever as well as too much, whichever the opinion goes, but they change these hanging ads a lot more often than the ones on the walls. So these ads are for a short span, focusing on upcoming store events, seasonal destination campaigns sponsored by travel agencies, and special alerts from the transportation service or authority. Posters advertising current magazine issues are the most common.
Lots of them are weekly, some are monthly or fortnight. All sorts of news and information I got in the deadly packed trains for years. These ads show only the headlines, which tend to be rather sizzling and attention-getting, but not necessarily representative of the actual article; that everyone knows. However, for those trains packed packed so tight with passengers who even can't open a book, the ads are offer some slight relief, information and distraction.
So, every time I visit back Japan, I enjoy looking at the Nakazuri ads. Since I rode those packed train for a long time, it still remains in my brain as a common way to get up to date information briefs.
I get what's new and hot, in politics and among girls/boys, bargains of department stores, museums' current exhibitions, etc. The special airport express trains don't have these ads so I take regular commuter train into the city. It's just like a path to transform me from the US mode into Japanese mode.
It is funny though that I cannot understand what the ads say for a while right after boarding the train. It is like too much of information and overwhelms my brain, really. It could be related to the direction of the text too; English goes horizontally and Japanese mostly goes vertically (in the ads above, they have both examples).
It makes me frustrated in the beginning because I can't read the lines as fast as I know I can. It is where I amaze how brain processes information with familiarity. The location in the train, typeface and size (present day font styles), the layout, the background color, etc., I used to be automatically able to process the information from looking at the ad text. I could pass the lines I didn't need without recognizing doing so. Now, I have to read each line from the beginning to the end to know what it says and see if it is needed, the magazine title to know what type of magazine that is, etc. It seems to frustrate my brain. My eyes even don't want to stick with the same eye site so long and start looking at something else before I finish reading as if the eyes know the estimate time better and I do. Therefore my comprehension of the information gets delayed and that frustrates me. Gradually I get better at reading and processing these ads the longer I stay in Japan, but my brain resets when I get back to O'Hare. This is fun to know that such a shifting struggle is going on in my brain though!
Anyway, they have a portal site of magazines with a page showing the current Nakazuri ads. I enjoy looking at them when I want to see brief updates on current events in Japan. You need some background knowledge of Japan and common sense knowledge about the advertisements in addition to the ability of read Japanese but I think these ads are good learning tools. When you click a magazine icon, some of headlines are displayed. You can copy/paste or right click the word or phrase or the whole sentence into either translation or dictionary page in the net. The headline sentences are short, so even translation tools may show a pretty accurate translation of the selected phrase.
You probably can purchase some of these magazine from a few different services in the US. Also, Japanese are finally gets into the age of eBooks. We'd love to review the device or service, so please send us a free trial! :D
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