Can we call it 24-Hour time please. Military time sounds so lame.

[Katsuo]

Looking at the TV schedules of the main stations (in Tokyo):
NHK NTV TBS Fuji Asahi TV Tokyo
Four use a 24-hour clock (counting up to 28:00 in two cases).
TV Tokyo (12 hours) prefix every time with one of the following: 朝, 午前, 昼, 午後, 夕方, 夜, 深夜.

Perhaps the 12 hour clock is gaining more influence over time, and more so in certain areas. I am not saying that it isn't used at all, just that the vast majority is 24 hours, unless things have changed drastically since I moved.

Nice list Thora. No wonder my mother called me a Rug Rat when I was a 子

Wally Wrote:Interesting how different cultures handle time, however. China, as I'm sure most people know, is all on the *same* time zone.

I didn't know that. Surprising. But as you say, the farmers lives haven't changed. Why should they care if someone far away notifies them they're actually waking up at noon. Some cultures aren't obsessed with time they way we are. The bus departs when there are enough people on it. It's a reminder of how society can become slave to things it creates for convenience. Sometimes even artificial things. *segue to SRS*

nii87 Wrote:If I remember correctly, the reason shops close at 25:00 or 26:00 (other than looking like they're working awesomely hard) is because they close at 1am or 2am. It's better than saying 18:00-24:00; 00:00-01:00 for instance.

I quite like the idea of a 18:00-02:00. Spend a long night at a Tokyo bar and stumble home yesterday! Carousing finally adds years to our lives. =]

Shirow66 Wrote:I have no idea, but wouldn't it be wonderful if the whole world used the logical 24 hour time system instead of the stupid confusing AM-PM crap?

100% agree! :-)

Wally Wrote:Interesting how different cultures handle time, however. China, as I'm sure most people know, is all on the *same* time zone. This is an east-west spread as wide as the continental US. So folks out west in China (not many out there, but more than zero of course) are getting up and having breakfast in the dark (sunrise is around 10 am). They are mostly agrarians, so maybe they just sleep very, very late. At some point however, I doubt if Beijing is going to be able to maintain this absurdity. (Before railroads mandated common time of course, all time was local, with noon being when the sun was at the top of its arc.

I am yet to visit that part of China but apparently Xinjiang runs on it's own 'unofficial' time that co-exists with the official Peking one.

One thing that I find shocking in Japan is not only the absence of summer time but the fact that the whole timezone it lies in seems to be so unnatural: when you look at the Russian regions strictly North from Japan, those are actually 2 or 3 hours behind Japan and that accounts for a much more natural spread of daylight. Having moved here from Europe, one thing I really miss the most is daylight till 22:00 or 23:00 in the summer and even introducing DSL in Japan won't help much, sadly...