Time habits

Russians, at least the urban kind, are surprisingly obsessed with the clock. Things should start & finish on time. Trains should run on time. You should work "from bell to bell", and then rush to do something else. Russians on the Moscow Metro definitely outpace the Japanese in Tokyo. Such determined bursts of energy ... to get home, go out, or go relax. They really seem to make transition time as short as possible. This 'culture' is very much the residue of top-down optimizations. It takes getting used to, seems both unnatural, and surprisingly anti-cooperative.