lack of civility on japanese commuter trains?
one day out of sheer boredom, i decided to take a little day trip to wakayama, in wakayama prefecture. the day was filled with trudging around with me finally ending up in a nearly empty disneyland-esque marina city. the travel brochures sure do a good job of selling this city and its attractions, but as far as i was concerned, the day was a total bust.
what does this have to do with commuter trains? well, on my return trip to osaka, i wanted to get on the fastest train, so i was on JR, seated next to this elderly gentleman in a typical salaryman suit. he had with him a white plastic bag, from which he produces a small bottle of sake and some ikapina (a peanut surrounded by shell of squid biscuit. yum). and as the train sped on its way to osaka, i was mildly astonished as he polished off a bottle, then another, then another, in total silence and with methodical regularity.
this is about the extent of my encounter with a rude fellow train passenger.
the bastard didn’t even offer me a sip.
which is why i found this article in asahi.com fascinating, as it recounts the story of the author who witnesses a fairly unlikely scene inside a train.
A 40-something woman was yelling at a senior high school girl who was seated in front of her, hogging two seats–her school bag occupied the seat next to hers. The woman must have told the girl to remove the bag and vacate the seat so she could sit down. But the girl kept punching a text message into her cellphone in sullen silence, completely ignoring the woman. Soon both their faces turned red, and serious tension filled the train.
generally it’s been my experience that women like the 40-something in the article will maybe glare at the girl or whisper to her friend about the declining morality of japanese youth. not this lady, i guess. she’s full of vinegar and righteous moxie. how did she know the girl isn’t a yakuza’s niece or something?
this being japan, though, the train companies’ solution is categorically ingenious.
It is obviously not only the unpleasant heat that irritates people and rattles their nerves. In a bid to urge train passengers to behave better, Keio Corp., the Tokyo-based railway company, invites the public to send in senryu poems five times a year. A senryu is a form of short poetry similar to haiku in structure.
of course! the first thing i think of when i want to punch the drunk dude next to me who’s drooling is write a poetry expressing my sorrow and injustices of the world. the author of the article submits two poems on his witnessing of the confrontation between selfish highschool girl and the densha vigilante.
A person remains standing/ A bag baggage occupies the seat/ Woe is me.
and,
Just pretend/ Your bag is your boyfriend/ Let him sleep with his head on your lap.
i feel better already.
“osaka bound/ next to a salaryman drinking sake/ i can sure go for a pint.”
from asahi.com
August 29th, 2006 at 1:27 am
Mate, you should take any train in Korea on any day of the year and you’ll see that and worse. Ive seen people vomiting, punching eachothers brains out, dudes jacking off old women pulling at one anothers hair. And as fun as that may sound to watch it was massively annoying. The trains in Japan are paradise compared to Korean trains.