Training

It is now five minutes to three on a Saturday afternoon in late August here in Tokyo, Japan. I am on a train travelling out to Kisarazu, which is a city in Chiba Prefecture about ninety minutes from Tokyo Station. I am typing this on my MacBook Pro and generally trying to make good use of my time.

As I got on the train I thought what would I do if I didn’t have my computer with me and how would I pass the time from Shinbashi Station to Kisarazu Station.

Below are ten things you can do to pass the time while commuting. Naturally, the ideas I give are applicable for Japan and my not be appropriate in some other big cities in the world. One idea I can think of right off the bat is the idea of sleeping on the train. In Japan you see some real pros at this and you wonder how they wake up in time for their stop.  Obviously in some other big cities the idea of sleeping on the train is not the best idea in the world as that opens you up to the less desirable elements of society and their wicked ways.

So lets gets started, what can you do on the train to make the time pass more quickly and to make the best use of your time productively or otherwise?

1. Read a book. In today’s society maybe the pastime of reading has gone out the door with people having full access online to newspapers, magazines and different websites. Whether you are reading the actual book or a book on tablet or phone, at least you are expanding your mind and maybe even learning something as well. A university on rails, so to speak.

2. If you know that you can sit down and it is not going be crowded, like the train I am on at the moment then why don’t you take your computer along and do some work? I had to write a blog post today. I basically knew I had ninety minutes stuck on a train so I decided that I would write this. It is amazing. Thirty minutes have passed since I got on the train and it feels like about five.

 3. If reading or writing is not your thing then use a MP3 player and listen to books or listen to different recordings of motivational speakers or the like. When I was back in New Zealand for a short time I would on occasions walk to work. It took me approximately one hour. In that time I would listen to Anthony Robbins on my iPod. It was very interesting and he came up with some very interesting ideas. Another good thing for me was that I couldn’t hear the dogs barking at me. For those of you who don’t know, I’m not the biggest dog fan in the world.

4. This wouldn't be a popular idea in Tokyo or any part of the world for that matter but you never know what you are going to discover. Why don’t you strike up a conversation with the person standing/sitting next to you? I know that in Tokyo you might get the very shy, don’t know where to look because it wasn’t part of the text book when he or she was growing up brush off or you might strike it lucky and get talking to someone who is very fascinating and has lived all over the world. Who knows if you don’t try? The amount of times I haven’t spoken to the attractive looking female sitting next or across from me is uncountable.

5. Make your time on the train productive by using it to think, I mean really think. Not about what you are going to have for dinner tonight or what the women you saw last night looks like naked, I mean think about ideas you can use to improve yourself, or ideas you can use in your work to increase your income or ideas to improve what you do and who you are about. You can write down any ideas on your phone and take action on them when you are no longer on rails.

6. If all of this is too intellectual or sounds like too much hard work then I suppose if you really must, you could play games on your phone, tablet or console. Not the best use of time in my book but at least you are doing something fun and the time passes quickly.

7. If you are on the commute home you could splash out and treat yourself by buying what are called in Japan, Green Car tickets and sitting in “ first class’’ luxury and having a drink or three. As long as you are not a nuisance to the others around you may get the ‘salaryman’ sitting next to you joining in and the time will pass very smartly.

8. Most of the time when you are commuting you will need to be standing up, so having a beer or writing the next Pulitzer Prize winning novel may not be applicable. If you have a little bit of room and if you are like me, and your bag is quite heavy then you could use it to do some weight training. Most of the people around you will be thinking you are crazy but don’t worry about what they think as you are there improving yourself and your body. Imagine if you did that every day. Look out Arnold!!!

9. As I am writing this a young man across the row in front of me is doing his English homework. I wonder if I should help him out. A half of me is saying why not and the other half of me is thinking he doesn’t want my help. I shouldn’t disturb him. My point here is look out for opportunities like that to help people. Whether it is standing up and giving your seat over to an elderly or physically challenged person or helping a junior high school student with their homework, you are doing a good deed and what are they going to say, “Go away?”

10. If all of the above is too much then you can just sit down or stand up and watch the world go by. Of course there is nothing wrong with that. Although in saying that you are wasting maybe a couple of hours a day where you could be very productive and getting things done and maybe even change the world.

Commuting on a train does not need to be wasted time. You can use it as productively or as wastefully as you want, it is your life after all. Remember one thing, those two hours on the train a day, you can never get back so why not use it?

As I finish I would just like to say that I am fifteen minutes away from my destination, so by the time I finish proofreading this and maybe making any alterations I will be at Kisarazu and I would feel like my train ride was not a big waste of time. I am quite proud of myself but I wouldn’t want to do this everyday. There is only so much train time a man can take. 

Sport!!!

It is interesting what sport does to some people. To some people the need to be out on a Saturday and Sunday living their dreams and running off the week's stresses. To others it means sitting in front of the television watching other people play their dream and basically drinking off the week's stresses

So what is it about sport that makes us want to travel to play or follow your favourite team or sit up half the night waiting for our favourite team to run out onto the field?

It's interesting when you live overseas you will go to unbelievable lengths to watch your favorite team play at the local sports bar but if you were at home you might not even bother.

For many people sport is about being social. It is about joining a team to play something that you love with a bunch of people who share your passion and want to share that passion with you. It is why the aforementioned people will seek out a sports bar to watch their national team play to feel part of a community or part of a country.

For other people it is a challenge. They want to challenge themselves, to get better at something, to see how far they can go. To see how far they can push themselves to succeed. To see if those people that they see on television are any better or any worse than themselves.

At the end of the day (to borrow a phrase often used in sport interviews) it is all about being social, it is all about doing exercise that helps us live a long and healthy life and when it comes to supporting our team, we like to do that because generally we have played the sport ourselves, we know what is going on in the game as we have experienced the emotions that the players are going through on our television screens or the stadium. We may even know some of them personally and we like to see them do well on the big stage.

Sport is great, sport is fun and the benefits are huge.