Here's a retro-story about an event that happened about a year and 1/2 ago while I was living in Tokyo. Its worthy of posting, since I'd only ever sent it via e-mail back in the day. Enjoy and you just might learn something as well.
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It started with my return trip from Tokyo Station at around 11pm on Monday. My friends and I had just spent the day at Disneyland and so I, like most other people at around 11pm on a monday, was dog-tired. The train ride started usually enough, cramped and crowded, with some guy wiping his freshly blown snot on one of the grips people use to balance themselves while standing. Then four or five business men in, what appeared to be second hand, navy blue suits boarded the train. From the bits of Japanese I understood coming from the loud, pushy, obviously drunken businessmen, I gathered that the loudest, most obnoxious among them was their "shacho" -company president. The rest were lackeys of some sort or another who assisted him to an open seat when it opened. His cohorts placed him in a seat next to a set of doors, near the middle of our car, from where he proceeded in his string of drunken babble loud enough to announce himself to those on the opposite end of the car. On a crowded Tokyo train this is not an easy feat, rest assured. Several stops went by before I finally caught an open seat. To my fortune (good or ill, Ill let you decide) the seat was spaced by two others between the shacho and myself. This is the point at which this particular train ride parted with the gross normality of life in Tokyo and became something ... more strange.
The shacho`s ranting became noticably louder, though it seemed impossible at the time given the decibel level of his bellowing before-hand. So, I looked over at the shacho to see what had irritated him so much more. I had been hoping to tune out the scene, as so many Japanese people are masters at doing, but I couldn`t. Not with what I saw when I looked over and saw this large, white-haired man screaming angrily into a lady`s ear that her typing on her cell phone had annoyed him. I just couldn`t believe it! For a few seconds I did nothing. Thinking, "How could she sit there and take this? Why doesn`t she get up and walk away?" But she didnt. She just sat there, typing, obviously disturbed by the belligerent drunk`s wailing. I saw one of the shacho`s lackeys waving at the lady to just ignore it, that the yelling would soon subside. However, a few more seconds passed ... no more than a minute in total since I first noticed but at least three minutes, I guess, since he directed himself at the lady. Well, I had seen just about as much as I could take. Without thinking about what I would say or do, I directed myself at the shacho from my seated position on the bench and spoke to him in English. Rather angrily myself, yet controlled, I ordered, "Stop yelling at her! Leaver her alone. Mind your own business!" And watched his face, in total shock, gape at me for another ten seconds or so before glancing around and saying something about either the lady or myself, I couldn`t tell. And yet the lady remained silent and unmoved. My neighbor, however, did not. Person #2 between the shacho and I also turned toward him and exclaimed, "Urusai!" (noisy!) and some other words I couldnt pick up. The shacho had been double teamed! And his lackeys remained in their respective positions but issued no defence. The shacho came to his own defence, eventually commenting that, "...men should not be sitting on the train, rather. they should stand and be masculine,". I`d have piped in again, but I figured that as he wouldnt have understood anyway, it would have bounced right off him. But that proved to be unnecessary as a man standing in front of me and to my right then replied ... something. Couldn't catch it, but with this new TRIPLE teaming, the shacho must have known he was beaten.
After the third man`s comments, the shacho occasionally made some side remarks to his cronies, but all yelling had subsided. During this time, I really wished I could just get off at the next stop ... run and hide in a sense. I could not and did not. Instead I prayed for a sense of calm on the train, and a calmness did come. But what amazed me most was that lady`s quiet resillience. When I disembarked a number of stops later she and the shacho were the only two left on our bench and she had not moved. She sat there, quiet and resolute, next to this man -though his lackeys had each disembarked by then.
As I write this, still in some sense looking for an explanation of what went on tonight, my tired mind trying to understand it. Only now do I begin to see the answer. In the end, I think it took my initial comment to break through the barrier that people in Japan put up all too frequently. One that bars others, or "outsiders", from daily life. I used to think that such building such a barrier was an inevitable part of living in a city the cize of Tokyo. Something needed to keep one sane. But, as tonight`s events have revealed, those barriers nearly let a self-important, pompous, drunkard abuse a young lady beyond any stretch of reason.
The moral? Well, I dont know if there really is one here. Nobody is perfect, so noone can judge or condemn another. So, I cant really say much more that I already have. Here are the facts. Draw your own conclusions.
Peace and goodnight.
Dave
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