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TIMES TARDY

As I departed the station this morning and the train man handed me my little slip of paper, the first little slip of paper in quite a long while now, the thought struck me as it does each time I get handed one of these: how very very strange, even incomprehensible, it would be to the US mentality to be informed that the people and the trains of Japan, the entire country, are so specifically and precisely and expectably and continually ON TIME that when a commuter train is a couple of minutes late a whole system-wide apologetic support apparatus swings into gear, and the train men stand at the exit wickets handing out little slips of paper with �e10 minutes�f or �e20 minutes�f or �e30 minutes�f punched out on the edge to indicate the maximum range of time the train was late (usually due to earthquake or accident), these late allowance slips to be signed and presented to the respective employers, in conjunction with the late-punched time card, to justify this aberrant lateness that is otherwise unconscionable and embarrassing in a nation so punctual that every other nation is way late by comparison. And how bizarre the very idea (especially to Long Island commuters as I recall), of being so able to count on the punctuality of trains that you can set your watch by them, or that the authorities can have such slips printed because train lateness is so rare, and that such slips will be used and honored, indeed never looked at askance but by a latecoming foreigner like myself.