That’s why I often see blind people (a few times a week), and literally “the blind leading the blind” (two blind people walking around Tokyo together). But I’ve only seen wheel chair bound people once or twice.

They must do their shopping, etc in the outer/newer suburbs of Tokyo because wheel chair access is hard to come by in my area (Kichijoji).

I’m surprised saffronsaris has never seen a blind person, I very often see people with a white stick, like a few times a week.
Anyawy, Tokyo is by far the city friendliest to the blind (or so it seems to me anyway) that I’ve seen (there, who am I to know).

I made this post in december and thought it was soo boring and not worth publishing. Going through my unpublished stuff this morning I decided to publish it. I guess I’ve been in Japan too long and don’t know have much objectivity anymore. At any rate, my brain is full of all kinds of useless knowledge like this so more will be forthcoming.

You are truly amazing. I am just eating up these kinds of posts about this kind of info. I have been going to Japan for 6 years and still didn’t know this.

I always assumed they were just for ordinary safety - to provide a bright color for people to see a stair or train platform. I had no idea about the different sizes of the bumps nor what the yellow panes were for.

Thanks for the cool info! Keep it coming!

Sounds like they are doing it quite a difficult way, since wind up spool versions have been around for years. With the spool version the string winds up inside the unit/handle, and there is a little cap that you can open to refill with chalk powder that you can buy in little plastic bottles from the hardware store.

I have a theory that you can travel the entire length of Japan simply by following the ‘yellow brick road’. Those yellow blocks and strips seem to be everywhere!

I’ve also seen other ones where they don’t even bother to paint it yellow, just glue or screw the little metal studs down. Perhaps it sometimes clashes with the design the street scapein new developments?

I guess for totally blind people it doesn’t matter about the colour, but for those with partial blindness that don’t use a cane or other aids the yellow might be helpful.