In the Train

The old Chinese saying goes "it take 10 years in your previous life to brew a chance to share the same boat with a him/her in your present life. And it takes 100 years to share the pillow". I am always wondering what I did to deserve the chance to share a subway train ride with my fellow passengers.

The subway train ride in Tokyo is dead. The moment a group of talkative and energetic teens board the train, they go dead silent. No one looks around to spot anything/anyone interesting, everyone is trying to avoid eye contact with strangers. I am often amused by this, so I just look around and try to catch anyone's eye contact when I am in the train.

When Irene came to Tokyo, we were sitting in the train and talked in Mandarin. "The train is really quite" " Yeah, I know". "Can we pretend to have a fight?" "Do you want to get on TV first then be deported to Canada and me to Taiwan?"

So I rested my case and we kept talking while everyone else in the train was so quiet. Suddenly Irene grab my shirt and asked me agressively if I think she is going to get rich one day.

I was genuiely shocked, thus, my facial expression said it all that we were not joking. The act clicked in my mind almost instantly and I took over the sence . I started to shake my head violently and gave this please-do-not-beat-me-up look. (I found that Japanese people are very sensitve in facial expression, they are very good at picking up your emotion in general, perhpas that's the side effect of living in a highly, densely populated area).

The train car is still in dead silence. I stole a glance over the people, no one was trying to look at us but the air was tense, you can feel that people in the car are starting to feel uncomfortable. The oyaji (old-middle-age man) sitting next to me just stood up and walked to the door, although it is not his stop to get off.

We resumed our conversation in normal pace, as if nothing has happened, so did our fellow passengers.