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Japan is changing or maybe just drunk

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

I think I was punched on the Chuo line tonight. I arrived at the platform in Shinjuku with a surprisingly light crowd waiting for the train, which happened to be a limited express. When the train arrived, however, very few people got off and so despite my being second from the front of the line I was one of the last people who could fit on the train. Two more people pressed in behind me, of course, and then we waited.

I think what happened next was that someone else tried to board despite their being no room. I was pressed up against an absolutely tiny woman who was so short my camera bag would have been in her face if I hadn't held it aloft. I could absolutely not press my 105kg frame forward onto her despite the growing desperation behind me. The pushing became violent with the combatants behind me wrestling for that last spot on the train that would save them eight minutes. It was then that I felt a sharp jab in my lower back, so I yelled, "Quit it!" over my shoulder. Some other guy then chirps up, asking what my problem is. I said, "What do you think!" and we departed in silence and stillness.

I honestly don't know that things like this were happening in a commuter train full of forty-to-seventy year olds when I first got here almost twenty years ago. But then, pay-day was three days ago, so perhaps one or more of my fellow-passengers had been drinking.