Amagasaki Train Wreck

Condolences to families of those killed in the commuter train wreck in Amagasaki, between Osaka and Kobe. Although I rarely traveled the remote mountainous train to Takarazuka, one of my homes was in nearby Mikage, Higashi Nada-ku, all within range of a few dozen kilometers.

Thus I potentially knew some of the people who would have gotten off that train on their way to work, like my work-mate Hiroshi Tanaka who lived in Takarazuka. He was devastated by the Great Kansai Earthquake (1995). When I last met with him in Osaka years later, he'd just finished fixing his mansion doors and windows. His concrete apartment had shifted out of plumb so all the doors jammed during the earthquake. All windows shattered in the whole building. He was one of the lucky ones in that 200-apartment building, but because the building wasn't condemned it didn't generate insurance repairs. Furthermore, the 200 apartment dwellers themselves had to cough up the money to uncover the foundation to make repairs. In other words, for years Mr. Takana was not only living with plastic over his windows and doors, but that natural disaster (earthquake) drained him of every yen he earned.

In the west we hoot about "safety first" and the like. It's all idiocy. Life brings with it a fatal disease that ensures we don't get out alive. Face it, whiners. More to the point, this train crash was attributed to a 23-year old driver with 11 months of experience driving trains. In the west we'd all start wailing about inexperienced youth, but we want it both ways-- experienced, seasoned workers are not in vogue and cost too much so we don't hire the 'gray beards' and then we whine and wail when inexperienced youth makes a mistake.

"Experience costs blood." (Yiddish proverb)