Also, Tokyo trains have air conditioning, whereas the Underground is so hot and stuffy I'm pretty sure I got brain damage from it.
Also^2, Japanese train stations have ads for B2B services, whereas almost every ad in London stations is for a musical. I'm not sure what this means.
(Also fondly remember the surprisingly numerous signs at Kings Cross about how you shouldn't assault any train employees, and how teenagers weren't allowed to buy matcha drinks because they have too much caffeine.)
Japan's trains have aircon but often it's not cold enough, and at the parts of the year when the climate moves from hot to cold or cold to hot you might find yourself on a train with heating still on because the calendar date is still "winter" even though it's a hot and sunny day, while you sweat profusely and feel irritated about the seemingly widespread inherent inflexibility of the Japanese.
Osaka's Hankyu trains are full of ads for musicals (it owns the Takarazuka Revue), I think that all this shows is that London has a far more vibrant cultural scene, which is apparent at all levels of society. I'd rather see ads for musicals than the ads for male hair removal clinics.
Well, London obviously does have one of (the most?) vibrant cultural scenes in the world.
(Last time I was there I saw a singer from Mali, which I thought was interesting mostly because all of her backing visuals were StableDiffusion AI art and I don't know if anyone else noticed.)
But it's also the capital of a country that should have an industrial economy and increasing doesn't have one anymore, because they've decided it's all sort of beneath them.
as for the uk train stations, the temperatures are in part due to their age - London Underground was built in 1870s, and since that time rocks accumulated so much heat that it is extremely difficult to maintain human-friendly temperatures. Japan subway is 70 years younger, so it’s easier for them to maintain temps.
(And my hometown Warsaw subway is even younger - 50 years, and we don’t have AC whilst temperatures are at a perfect level).
What London underground might need is not AC, but a process to cool down rocks - importing coolness during winters. To maintain equilibrum you’d need to pump out around 1TWh heat every year. To bring it down to normal levels in say 20-30 years you’d need to pump out 2-5TWh a year.
What does that mean, “rocks accumulate heat”? Should be an even cool temp down there, as long as tunnels aren’t too deep. A few vents to allow hot air to rise should work, no?
Also^2, Japanese train stations have ads for B2B services, whereas almost every ad in London stations is for a musical. I'm not sure what this means.
(Also fondly remember the surprisingly numerous signs at Kings Cross about how you shouldn't assault any train employees, and how teenagers weren't allowed to buy matcha drinks because they have too much caffeine.)