One Shot Story: (Un)Available Coin Lockers at Shin Osaka Station

コインロッカー, the coin-operated lockers, are fundamental to travel around Japan: this is the first lesson any first-timer to this Country should learn beforehand. – Initially publishd on 35mmc.com

Almost ubiquitous, they are plentiful in train stations and airports and are a convenient way to get rid of your luggage for a few hours or days while you are on a stopover.

Until a few years ago, finding an empty コインロッカー was not such a daunting task, even when there were large numbers of tourists. Now, however, things have changed for the worse.  Recently, on my way to Tokyo from Kyushu, I did —as the automatic PA system of the Shinkansen likes to say— ‘a brief stop at Shin Osaka station’ and despite a careful search I couldn’t find an empty locker. There may have been one available somewhere, but I couldn’t find it nonetheless.

The inconvenience wasn’t that great, as I eventually decided to make a detour to leave the load at the hotel and postpone exploring the town, but I couldn’t help thinking, having come to Japan many times in the last years, how things had changed in such a short time, how right Aldous Huxley was when he explained why people travel, and how this affects how/what people see when taking photograph in unfamiliar places (a topic I discussed here.)

Be that as it may, let’s go back to the picture: in stark contrast to the morning stream of humanity that floods the station’s corridors, the place tends to empty out in the evening, with the result that the coin-operated lockers become plentiful again when they are no longer useful, unless, of course, you have chosen to arrive in Osaka at a later time.

I took the picture with my Nikon 35TI loaded with a Ferrania P30 and scanned it with a Nikon LS4000.