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Yomiuri Weekly (3/23)

The Japanese have a reputation for being well-mannered, but anyone who's ever caught a train here would know that it's not always deserved. Finally, though, a railroad operator has come up with an idea to get people behaving properly with the Yokohama Municipal Subway by appointing manner police, who'll start operating later this month, Yomiuri Weekly (3/23) says.
The subway's manner cops -- officially, they're being referred to as "manner upgraders" -- will ride on the Green Line in pairs on weekday afternoons accompanied by security guards, just in case anyone takes exception to their admonitions for bad behavior.
Each of the 11 manner cops has received formal instruction from a corporate training company, learning the correct manners in addressing people, how to approach to strangers and phrases to use that make it simpler to get a point across to others.
"Even though people talk about manners, you'd be surprised how tough it was to come up with definitions of what exactly proper behavioral manners for trains are," a spokesman from the City of Yokohama Transportation Bureau tells Yomiuri Weekly. "We're going to keep looking into this from now on, but for the time we're just going to issue gentle warnings being anybody who's clearly being out of line."
The types of infractions the subway's manner cops will be on the lookout for include people standing near carriage entrances and making it tough for others to get on or off the trains, those taking up more than one seat and others who are using their mobile phones, including to send e-mail.
Another notable feature of the initial 11 manner cops who'll work the line is that most of them are old, with four in their 70s and two in their 80s, the oldest being 81. The six men and five women will also receive a token payment of 500 yen an hour for the three hour shifts they perform.
The manner cops are raring to go when the city's transportation bureau unleashes them on the trains from March 30.
"There are some youngsters who behave in an eye-catching way, but you've got to be careful if you say anything to them because it could end up in a fight. Fortunately, I've been trained over the best way to approach these people," one 70-something man who'll become a manner cop tells Yomiuri Weekly. "I want to put all my life experience to good use." (By Ryann Connell)


source-mainichi