Chanpon has a little article talking about Japanese train melodies – the sounds that Japanese trains play to warn of the trains imminent departure. I was really set on collecting some of these sounds myself and post the recordings but it looks like there already an NPR report about them and you can download the sounds online in MIDI format. This is my favorite train sound. It is so soothing I don’t even want to board the train when I hear it.
UPDATE: Thanks to Derek for letting me know that the second site has been shut down. It is a real shame. I have put some of the sounds online here. My favorite is Jr2.mid.
That last link is broken. If you go to http://homepage2.nifty.com/carriersound/ he says the web page is shut down. Too bad. Which chime was it you were referring to? Is it on the other site?
Tetsuwan no Atom (Astro Boy) fans will want to visit the station that plays that program’s theme son. Takadanobaba, I think (his birthplace, in the story).
Hmm, isn’t his birthplace Takarazuka? That is Sayaka’s hometown too! Cool. Thanks the pointer Lazslo
I had a heckuva time trying to get the midi files into my toshiba cell phone. I finally found a free proggy from Yamaha that converts the mdi file into an smaf file which the phone recognizes and plays. The URL is http://smaf-yamaha.com/tools/downloads.html. They only seem to have versions for windows OS. The one I’ve had success with is ATS-MA3-SMAF (Ring Tone) (Ver.1.4.0).