To Kill Time? (Yu Jin Yi)

It is common to say that one “kills” time while riding the subway (or the train).
I guess part of the reason such a strong word (“kill”) is used for spending time within
train has to do with the special nature of the time within train; the time within train has
the connotation of the time “wasted,” since the time is spent only to arrive at a specific
place. Until one arrives at a specific spot he or she wants to go, the moving time is
somewhat “wasted.”
However the word “kill” has another connotation (besides wasting time) in
Korea—it literally means to do nothing during a designated time period. It’s slightly
different from “wasting” time, since when you waste your time it can mean anything
from just sleeping to playing computer games to doing something—when you “kill”
time you don’t think about anything, don’t read anything, don’t do nothing. I used to do
that all the time back in Korea, just blankly gazing at somewhere out the window or
turning my up and down. Then I would accidentally look into the eyes of the person
sitting at the opposite side of me and blush.
Japanese seem to be not at all familiar with this definition of “killing” time.
Maybe it is part of their ethnicity to condemn any time wasting (or maybe I’m being
racist) or they just hate staying still and doing nothing in their precious time, I don’t
know, but anyway Japanese seem to utilize their spare time effectively. Several times
have I ridden trains in Japan and observed the people (except for those times when the
train was packed with so many people that I can barely breathe) and found them holding
books, Nintendo, comic books, or at least something they could focus on. Of course not
all of them were holding something—some people were just staring at random spaces
like I did—but the majority was doing something.
I guess, as I understand it, the older one is, the more likely that he or she is
holding a book (with the cover sealed with some kind of paper book cover so that other
people wouldn’t know what the book is—a cultural difference I will never understand)
or solve Sudoku puzzles. It amazes me that the people of that age are still very active in
terms of their mental processes. On the other hand the people in their twenties or thirties
seem to hold on to Nintendo, cell phones, magazines, or Smart tabs more than books.
Whatever the case is, “killing” time in Japanese train seems to differ in its
definition from “killing” time that I am familiar with. Whether it is playing games on
one’s cell phones, or solve Sudoku puzzles, or whatever it is, people in Japan try to
spend their spare time as efficiently as possible. Recently in Korea growing number of
people use their Smart phones to use the Internet or watch videos and so on, but it is still
a peculiar scene in Korea.