Sitting On Trains
Japan
Sitting idly on trains. That’s where most of your impressions of the countries you have travelled to have come from.
Japan is no exception.
Here the aisle floors are spotless. People eat and drink on these trains and yet they still manage to remain immaculate. In Australia people aren’t allowed to eat and drink on the trains yet they end up smeared with beer and vomit on a Friday night. It is one of Japan’s great mysteries how the carriages remain so clean and yet you never see anyone picking up rubbish.
The seats are plush blue velvet, sometimes heated in winter. White loops swing in a row from the ceiling of the carriage to accommodate the rush hour that stretches anywhere from 3 p.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. at night. A train attendant bows low as he enters the carriage murmurs ‘o-hayo gozai masu’ and starts walking slowly through the carriage. He is wearing a cream suit with white gloves. He looks refined and dignified, like a butler. I scramble to find my ticket then realise the attendant isn’t checking for tickets he is performing some other duty which remains unclear. I watch him walk up and down the train again and again, but I can’t seem to determine his reason for doing so.
There are flags hanging from the ceilings advertising fashion magazines and travel destinations like Switzerland and Canada. Advertisements for Manga films. Pictures of adolescent girls dressed up in provocative clothing.
By nightfall there are a few weary heads hung over expensive bags after 10-hour working days. They move from side to side as the train takes a corner. They don’t stir, but somehow intuitively know when their stop is approaching and rise to meet the train’s doors like zombies. They are the over-worked, over-stressed office workers of Japan. They operate on five hours sleep a week and two meals a day. The white bullet train zooms past at 250 kilometers per hour. Everything is moving at ultra speed.
While its commuters may nap on the train, Japan itself never sleeps.
I sit down at a vacant seat. No one sits next to me. My presence makes some people in the carriage uneasy or shy, I don’t know which. People recoil as I ease myself into the carriage’s only vacant seat, shocked that I have chosen to sit next to them. I wonder if I’m sweating through my cheap tailor-made suit. Japan has made me feel dirty and dishevelled. Like I have been dressing up in my mother’s office wear. No matter how much time I spend trying to look clean and conservative, some smudge on my clothing, or my static hair screams that I am just another grungy gajin. I can’t believe how well groomed the women over here are. Their attention to detail, their Louis Vuitton hand bags, their perfectly coiffed hair…
An elderly woman eyes me as if I were some exotic insect. A young child smiles as she plays with her plaited hair and swings her tiny legs over the seat. A young woman in dangerously high heels flicks open a mirror the size of a window pane and starts applying lipstick and eye-liner. She plays with a strand of hair for about ten minutes, placing it over her eye than away from it over and over again.
I feel the eyes of a middle-aged businessman on me. As soon as I try to meet his gaze he quickly diverts it. He clutches an Asahi beer in one hand. He looks weary and messy. His glasses are eschew and he is casually leafing through a pornographic comic book. A young woman next to him is immersed in the world of her mini disc player, indifferent to the man’s reading material. The salary man’s white shirt is crumpled and hanging out of his pants. He splays himself out on the seat, looking considerably less dignified than he probably did many hours ago when he set out for his day in a freshly pressed suit.
Once again I return to my book only to feel his persistent eyes tracing the shape of my shirt. Again the eyes are diverted when I look up. I wish that he would look me squarely in the eye so I could stare back at him. Instead he continues sneaking glances at me like an immature school boy.
On the way back from Kyoto to Osaka I notice the rice fields in-between apartment blocks and the urban sprawl which fans out before my eyes. Also the deep green mountains that fringe the urban sprawl on either side of the train. At night I am entranced by the neon signs that glitter from pachinko parlours and six-floor amusement parlours on either side of the train tracks. They flash past like the set of some science fiction film.
Flickering past my eyes, short-circuiting synapses make me blink madly as I yawn into my hands.
Insomnia has crept in at night. Keeping strange hours has turned me into a desperate, nocturnal creature. After the train trip I slip down to a local 24 hour internet cafe to read my emails. I leave at about 1 a.m. to turn on some Japanese TV show that is strangely compelling despite the language barrier.
The lack of sleep has also led to carelessness.
At the Internet cafe I realise I have left my wallet with its passport inside on the train. Such a loss would usually have me crippled with worry. In Japan though, I’m not that concerned. The wallet has probably already been handed in.
My suspicions are correct. The next day I go to the Kyoto Lost and Found section and a woman immediately understands why I am there. She pulls out my gigantic maroon wallet with butterflies emobroided on it and I want to kiss her. She looks startled. I settle for a low bow to indicate my gratitude. Only in Japan would my passport and wallet with all its contents intact find its way back into my hands within 24 hours of losing it.
