For those who have lived in Japan, do the train speed names mean much to you? I lived in Kanagawa so I lived with Keiykuu’s (普通/急行/特急/快特) and JR’s (普通/快速/特快/特急), but to be honest my cognitive flow chart is:
- 普通«Local»
- 急行«Express»
- Pick two random kanji from 快特急速, invent a word, ignore it anyway, and just go by color
I mean, even in English the terms are kinda nonsense to me. “Limited Express”. “Rapid Express”. “Rapid Service.” I’m just left with a blank face upon hearing any of those. I’m left thinking, “Are those supposed to mean something to me?” I might be inventing this memory, but I swear I’ve had multiple interactions with people where they told me they took X train (IN ENGLISH), and I was still lost, e.g:
“Yeah, I took the limited express from Shinagawa.”
“What, like, the Keikyuu green train?”
I ask since these words are part of my vocab rotation, but to be honest, I only understand them in the aforementioned tiers, i.e. (normal, express, everything else). I’m always torn between “I should learn the proper definitions of these names” and “ah whatever it’s all advertising fluff nonsense anyway - I know it’s a train speed; good enough”. Unless we’re talking Shinkansen trains, but even then I’m going to think of them by the little names they have, e.g. “nozomi”.