A woman sits next to me on a crowded commuter train, reading a thick book in English. She’s Japanese, in her 50’s, and naturally my curiosity is piqued. What book I don’t know, but I see names like Goethe, and Germany. On the surface it must be history, or biograpy. But it reads like fiction. At any rate, I want to talk to her, find out the title, and why she’s reading it. But I don’t of course, the moment I do 10 pairs of eyes would shoot our way, bringing embarrassment. But I’m not worried about my embarrassment, but her’s. This is Japan, where people read their books on trains covered by some anonymous paper (usually provided by bookstores), giving them some “cover” of privacy. Of course it’s entirely possible she was actually letting me see the inside of her book on purpose, but we’ll never know, will we?
Posted via cellphone.
Just yesterday I was sitting on the train drawing the folks in front of me, and one (quite attractive) young woman who was reading a book accross the isle, saw me, she stood up and did a very bad job of acting like she wanted to look at an advertisement poster closely, then she sat back down, this time next to me.
Somehow I knew she would be reading an English book, and sure enough she was. (it had phases like “Where is the doctors office?” and “I would like coffee please.”
I know she wanted so much to talk, and she obviously didn’t mind being stared at, and i probably should have been nice and indulged her…
But sometimes I just want to be left alone like the cold, introverted bastish that I am. I still feel bad though…
I never realized that the book stores here provide covers. How did you connect the two?
The social ethics in the trains are really interesting. My colleague mentioned that it’s called ‘Anmoku no ryoukai’.
How long does it take to write so much via cellphone? You must be pretty fast and have alot of patience using the keypad. Or a long commute 😉
Kurt, you are not alone. I also started my moblog via au today, and it worked!!!
oh chris, by the way, thanks for the mention of ‘Anmoku no ryoukai’. I asked my wife, and looked it up in my dictionary…i can see it’s something I’m going to want to explore more.
Kevin-
That has happened to me too, sometimes it’s so obvious they want to talk, but they for some reason I get shy too, or I’m in a space where I don’t want to talk with someone else, whoever they are or in whatever language. But I always feel so bad afterwards, especially as someone who himself is quite shy. But you know, if I had been in San Francisco, I wouldn’t have thought twice about whether or not to talk to her (let’s say if it was a non-Japanese reading a Japanese book), so I think in some ways the culture’s reticence and regard for privacy is rubbing off on me.
Chris-
I’ve long been fascinated by the fact that almost every Japanese I’ve seen reading a book has it covered, and when I buy books I’m always presented with the question or whether or not I want a cover. Actually, I’ve been wanting to write about this phenomenon for some time (continuing on thoughts I wrote about in this post), and will probably come back to it (there’s only so much one can write on a cellphone!)
speaking of which, let’s see, it took me about 20 minutes to write this. I’ve gotten quite fast at typing on the pint-sized keyboard. It’s actually somewhat of a surreal experience, trying to compose in my head on the fly, translate my thoughts and hastily prepared sentences to the keyboard, but because it’s a regular phone keypad set up for numbers first, letters second (meaning to get a small “a”, I need to hit the “2” key 4 times, to get a small “s”, I need to hit the “7” key 8 times), I’m also counting in my head as I type, 1,2,3.4.5 (e), 1,2,3,4,5,6 (v), etcetera. It’s hard to describe but anyone who’s ever emailed on a cellphone knows what I’m talking about. Anyway, I might go insane if I continue this!
On the flipside, it’s going to be great for getting me to be more concise. (or hasten the purchase of a camera-equipped phone!)
Do you mean that in San Fran you would have talked to them? If so I understand. When I went back to the US a couple times last year for vacations, I was pleased and amazed at how easy it is to strike up a conversation with a stranger on the bus, or sidewalk, or whatever.
Still… for some reason I fall into the same rap of NOT being outgoing while in Japan.
It has gotten so bad that once while a go I saw an old woman carying a heavy object up the station steps, and I wanted so much to help her, but was afraid to scare the crap out of her by talking to her. I was plagued by guilt for weeks.
I wonder if we arent just assuming too much when we assume they will be embarased or scared because we are gaijin…
A lot of people think it would be scary if every one in the world could read every one elses mind… but it’s situations exactly like this that make me think that ESP would solve most of the world’s problems.
Do you know, I always assumed the covers were just to protect the books; privacy never occurred to me. Seems I have a lot to learn…
interesting.. when I moved back to the San Francisco area from Japan about 3 years, I was on CalTrain one day, and heard some folks speaking Japanese behind me. They were talking about Linux and Java. I felt very comfortable turning around and saying hello in Japanese (since I knew they’d be surprised).. we started chatting, and have been friends ever since. Turns out one of the passengers had written some books on travel to Japan, and I had created JapanInYourPalm while I was in Japan.. so you never know.. just say hi. Al