Tokyo Madness

Today had to be one of the strangest days I can remember.

I had an early job and had to do pretty much the height of morning rush hour. Same trip I take every other Friday. It was raining, which sucked, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The train was really crowded. I was wedged into a corner of one of the doors (not a bad spot as far as that kind of thing goes). Just as the door starts closing, this fiftyish guy squeezes in. Again, nothing strange about any of this...until he starts really shoving me. The train was so packed, that there was not an inch of space I could have shifted to. My back was to him and I tried to ignore what was just a bit more than usual jostling. Suddenly, he starts deliberately shoving me while shouting loudly (in English), "My space! My space! My space!!!"

For those of you not in Tokyo, morning rush hour trains might be packed but they are generally very quiet. This guy was shouting loudly as he was shoving. I was too shocked to be mad...for a few seconds. I managed to turn around to face him (the train was so packed that even that was hard...I'm not even sure how he got the leverage to shove me). I made eye contact and almost whispered "If you don't stop shouting or touch me one more time I will beat the shit out of you right on this train." (or something to that effect). I don't know why, but the quiet voice in English works better than anything else in a situation like this. He didn't understand the English, but caught the intent. He shut up and stayed as far away as possible from then.

Too bizarre!!!!!

Same trip to work, I get to Shibuya and walk past two salary men beating each other with their briefcases. Strangely enough, they were hitting each other in the legs with the briefcases. The police were arriving as I walked past.

As I wondered if the whole city was losing its mind, I got on my last train. Some college-aged kid tried to jump in as the doors were closing (the trains were running every 90 seconds at that point) and got caught dead center. He was a little panicky and reaching into the car asking for help. He wanted someone to pull him in. We just stared. He was an idiot.

On the way home, the train I was on broke down and was stuck in a tunnel for twenty minutes.

Wanna guess how carefully I looked both ways before crossing the streets when walking home from the station?!

What are the odds of that chain of events...and why couldn't they culminate in me hitting the lottery or something?

At least today wasn't boring!