I notice this too in Europe but the extent to which a two minute delay here literally never happens is incredible - only one of the several dozen trains I took was off schedule by my more than a minute, and that one was a Shinkansen that was four minutes late into Osaka from Tokyo.

The biggest thing about mass transit in Japan - beyond the insane coverage - is that I don’t have to build in an “MTA tax” for random service screwups. If it’s supposed to take 39 minutes it takes 39 minutes.