“You know I used to work for a company in Tokyo? You’d never imagine it now looking at me. But I did, back in the bubble era. I used to get on the commuter trains in the morning with everyone else. You’ve seen the railway attendants pushing people onto the trains, right? In those days, they also had to pull people out. People were so tightly crammed in that someone had to pull them off the train as well as pack them in. So one day, I thought I’d try it. You know what I did, right? I just picked my feet up, to see if I’d fall over. I didn’t fall over. I just stood there supported by everyone else as the train took me into work. That’s when I decided to get out of Tokyo.”

That kind of thing is why I go to that language teacher.