Ain't Getting On No train Fool.

The Tokyo underground and overground (wombling free though any womble round here'd swiftly find itself gutted and its nostrils served to the gaigin) is legendary and I'm here to tell you it's all true. There really is a little grey suited man sporting white gloves whose job it is to greet you with a hearty 'Ohayo gozaimas' and gently 'aid' those alighting particularly crowded trains. Another dapper fellow has the job of leaning out of the window to make sure the doors line up exactly with the lines painted on the platform behind which commuters wait obediently in lines. It gets pretty damn crowded too. People spilling out when the doors open. I swear I once saw a lady doing the 'wide mouthed frog' against the window. Consider that Tokyo not only has both an underground system larger than the Tube but also an equally sizeable overground network both with trains running three minutes apart ata all but the quietest times. Now consider that both are rammed for several hours of the day and you start to get some idea of the scale of it's dedicated workforce. Despite the logistics of transporting so many people to their destination the system functions perfectly. Proving once and for all that Richard Branson and Railtrack are a bunch of shiteing cunts. The only thing to disturb the harmony is when some poor 'salaryman', faced with a lifetime of this daily soul sapping, opts for a swift exit in front of the incoming 7.35. This appears to happen on a daily basis judging from the on-train information screens broadcasting delays due to 'accidents'.

What makes this crush bearable is the knowledge that some greasy cunt isn't going to have your bag as soon as your back's turned. The Japanese are incredibly law abiding (one of Cath's students thought that westerners think an abandoned bag in the street is a gift to them from God) and it makes a very welcome change, if being taken to the point of bloody mindedness at times. This is how we do it, this is how we've always done it and no it can't be changed even if it makes no sense and no-one can remember why we started doing it this way in the first place and what are you doing asking questions about it anyway? They are also unfailingly polite (even through gritted teeth at rush hour). The theory is that Japanese society has a lot of social codes because so much of the land is uninhabitable and everyone has to rub a along together in a very small space and it's better not to kick up a fuss by questioning things. A well known motto is 'The nail that sticks up gets hammered down'. Indeed.

Gotta go. The office won't run itself you know.