Yamanote Line … 50th anniversary

The JR 山手線 (Yamanote Line ) is probably the most famous train line in Tokyo.

It’s a one-hour loop around 29* stations in the heart of the city. (* a new station is planned to be added soon).

Every train and subway line in Tokyo has a unique color to make them easy to identify.  These colors are used on train and subway maps, on platform signs and the trains themselves are painted those colors (either a solid color or, more commonly nowadays, two-tone silver and the “line color”).

The Yamanote Line‘s color is lime-green.

For the past thirty years or so, the Yamanote Line has been using “205 series” trains. Older model trains have been phased out of use many years ago.

But, this year only, the Yamanote Line has re-introduced the older “103 series” trains back into service.

This is because the 103 series trains were first used on the Yamanote Line in 1963…fifty years ago.   So, the older model trains can be ridden until December 2013!

Here are some photos that I took last weekend of the special 50th anniversary 103-series Yamanote Line trains:

These special 50th anniversary trains are painted solid lime-green just like they used to be years ago (as opposed to the current silver and lime-green).

If you’re in Tokyo, you can ride this train until December 2013.

It says “50th anniversary of the birth of the green Yamanote Line 103 series train”.

(By the way, if you were in Tokyo four years ago, you may remember the only time that some Yamanote Line trains were brown instead of green. Click here to read a post about it.)

August 1st birthdays

As I mentioned in the previous post, today is my oldest daughter’s sixteenth birthday.

On the day she was born in 1993, the TV news here in Japan showed two Japanese twins who had become famous a year earlier because the both turned 100 years old.
The day my first baby was born these twins turned 101.

Their names were 「成田きん」 (Kin Narita) and 「蟹江ぎん」 (Gin Kanie). After they became famous all over Japan, they often did TV commercials in the early – mid ’90s.
As a term of affection, they were called 「キンさん、ギンさん」 (“Kin-san, Gin-san“).

「キンさん、ギンさん」 (“Kin-san, Gin-san“) were born on 1892 August 1 and lived to be 107 and 108 years old, respectively.

「キンさん、ギンさん」 ("Kin-san, Gin-san"). (Their names mean "Gold" and "Silver")

I knew since the day my oldest daughter was born that 「キンさん、ギンさん」 (“Kin-san, Gin-san“) shared a birthday with her.

But I found out today that the Japanese astronaut, 若田光一 (Koichi Wakata), who just came back to Earth from a mission with the Space Shuttle Endeavour also has the same birthday as my daughter.

He was born on 1963 August 1.

So he returned from his mission in space just in time to celebrate his birthday on Earth. The first thing he did was eat 寿司 (sushi).