"What do you want to be when you grow up?" I suppose this is
one of the questions we're
most
frequently asked when we're children. Do
you remember what you answered long ago? In Japan many young boys have always wanted to
become train
drivers. They have always loved to watch running
trains and they wave at
passing trains. It looks like many fully grown men who were once wannabe train drivers still harbor a lot of affection toward trains and railways. We call such rail
fans or rail enthusiasts “Tetchan” which comes from Tetsudo, which literally means railways.
*E-257 Azusa, photo(right) Courtesy of East Japan Railway Company
There are several types of Tetchan. For example, Tori-tetsu(撮り鉄) love to
take railway and train photos, Nori-tetsu (乗り鉄）love to
ride trains and travel only by train, and Eki-tetsu (駅鉄）love to
visit railway stations however distant they may be and appreciate the nostalgic design of far-flung shabby stations as well as modern
ones in cities. There used to be only male tetchan in this country, however, in
recent years, it has been possible to
come across a lot more
female tetchan, particularly young women
tetchan
around the country.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and my cat Naotan
Haruki Murakami’s new novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of
Pilgrimage” sold more than a million copies in just over a week when
it went on sale last month. The protagonist, Tsukuru, works
for a railway company where he designs
stations. He
has always been a tetchan, precisely, an Ekitetsu, since childhood. In the last chapter of the novel, Tsukuru sits
on a bench seeing off the last train bound for Matsumoto leaving Track 9 and
disappearing into darkness at Shijyuku Station in Tokyo. The novel only says
that the train is a limited express of E-257 series.
Track 9 and Track 10 at Shinjyuku Station
I was so curious about what the E-257 express train was like that I went to
look for ones
at Shinjyuku Station which has the Track 9
because I could not quite figure out what the novel really meant even though I'd read through to the end. I suspected that the E-257 express might have something to do with the
theme of the novel.
To my surprise, I found out that the last E-257 was a type of
train called
Azusa and was very colorful. It must be one of the most
colorful trains to
have ever existed in Japan. This
means that in the final chapter of the novel, colorless
Tsukuru sees off the colorful express train Azusa at the platform. Whew! The
contrast between colorlessness and colorfulness intrigues me a lot.
E-257 Azusa ↑↓ bound for Matsumoto
inside the train (E-257 Azusa)
*
The Azusa has two types: the E-257 series and the E-351 series called Super Azusa. The photo below is Super
Azusa and is not E-257 Azusa.
Inexperienced in railway photography, I was quite puzzled at how to take photos of trains coming in and leaving. I'm not a tetchan at all and I have now and then felt their great enthusiasm for trains and railways a little bit annoying because some ill-mannered tetchan do whatever they want in order to take good photos.
I asked one of the station staff about when the next E-275 Azusa would arrive. I was pretty shocked to hear him say, "Well, 15 minutes afterwards. Another tetchan yesterday asked me the same question."
