Packed Trains
I don’t know if I will ever get used to how full trains get during rush hour. At one point this evening, with the press of people, I wasn’t able to keep both feet on the ground. I had to fight to stay standing as everyone around me was much bigger.
I’ve often wondered what would happen if the train stopped suddenly. Tonight at Shinjuku something got stuck in the door. The train started forwarded for a couple of seconds and then appeared to stop dead. Most people managed to stay standing with only one person in the carriage falling over. Thankfully it wasn’t me.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Occasionally my language teacher will go off on long monologues, and he did one on Monday that went like this:
“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. 🙂