Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Japan Aside: Blind people.
Japan is *wired* for the blind. I first noticed it a few days after getting into Tokyo, but there are these yellow tiles all over the city. All over the city. Think about that. Yellow tiles *all over Tokyo*. This is one of the biggest cities in the world, and every street I walked down had a long line of yellow tiles with ridges on it. Then you’d get to the street and the tiles would terminate in bumpy tiles. I was suspicious about it for a while, and E confirmed it, these are for blind people. The ridged tiles indicate paths, and the bumpy ones indicate ‘stop, you’re about to walk into a street.’
Just imagine how much this must have cost! Not only where these tiles all over Tokyo, but all over nearly every city we visited. Millions and millions of tiles! Plus installation costs! Unreal.
The stranger part, though, the really weird part, is that I kept a running total of the number of blind people I saw while in Japan. The number of people for whom all this expense was spared. Know how many blind people I saw in Japan? Zero.
There are two working theories why this is so:
1) The prime minister or some high-up bureaucrat has a blind brother or cousin, and he pushed the legislation through.
2) The blind-assistance in Japan is so efficient that blind people can walk around without completely normally, and with no other visible means of assistance.
Me? I’m thinking #2.
-N
Japan is *wired* for the blind. I first noticed it a few days after getting into Tokyo, but there are these yellow tiles all over the city. All over the city. Think about that. Yellow tiles *all over Tokyo*. This is one of the biggest cities in the world, and every street I walked down had a long line of yellow tiles with ridges on it. Then you’d get to the street and the tiles would terminate in bumpy tiles. I was suspicious about it for a while, and E confirmed it, these are for blind people. The ridged tiles indicate paths, and the bumpy ones indicate ‘stop, you’re about to walk into a street.’
Just imagine how much this must have cost! Not only where these tiles all over Tokyo, but all over nearly every city we visited. Millions and millions of tiles! Plus installation costs! Unreal.
The stranger part, though, the really weird part, is that I kept a running total of the number of blind people I saw while in Japan. The number of people for whom all this expense was spared. Know how many blind people I saw in Japan? Zero.
There are two working theories why this is so:
1) The prime minister or some high-up bureaucrat has a blind brother or cousin, and he pushed the legislation through.
2) The blind-assistance in Japan is so efficient that blind people can walk around without completely normally, and with no other visible means of assistance.
Me? I’m thinking #2.
-N
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