Funny story, although not so at the time.

On my way home from seeing a movie today, I was playing a Sony PSP on the train. Like always, I was standing in the area closest to the door but pressed up against the seat to avoid traffic. At one point an old man (probably in his 70s) got behind me and actually pushed me off the train.  Since he was stumbling on the train as well I just figured he was trying to get off, and rather than block his exit, I just decided to get off and let him pass.  Well, much to my surprise, rather than exiting like a normal person, the old man continued to push me to keep me from getting on the train again. We got about 10 ft. away from the train door and I was trying to get around him to re-board, but he was doing a pretty good job of getting in my way.  Then things started to escalate.  He started yelling at me and tried to rip the PSP from my hands. He was obviously drunk and was yelling at me for both playing games and not understanding the rules being a foreigner.  I wasn’t quite sure what rules he was referring to, but I had had enough of his crap so I told him we were going to the police (in Japanese of course) and strangely he immediately agreed to go with me.

I was pissed as hell at this point, but I decided that rather than go to the police we should just stop at the station office and let them deal with this piece of work. When we got there I told the people what he did to me and he said, “Yep, that sounds about right,” and proceeded to explain to me that you can’t play games on the train. The office attendant butted in and told him that you can’t push other riders off the train and that playing games is not against “the manners” as long as you are wearing headphones and not playing the sound loud enough to bother other riders. The old man bowed and said something like, “Yeah, I suppose there are some things that I should apologize for too.”  After hearing this sentence I got even angrier and told him, “There’s no damn too about this at all.  You owe me an apology!”  At that point he started to berate me for not accepting his apology and the office attendant had me sit down so he could start talking to him about how playing games isn’t a moral offense. They then asked me if I wanted to call the police to report him but I told them I just wanted to go home.

It was a very bizarre experience and not one I would really want to repeat but I felt it was pretty strange that the old guy would actually physically accost me to stop playing games quietly on the train. I’m totally for this “Be mindful of your neighbors” campaign that they are running here to keep people calm on the trains but this was pretty crazy.

The worst part was that when the station attendant told the old man to apologize to me the old man tried to hug me. The station attendant jumped in between us because he was probably unsure of how I would react to getting touched by the old man. In the end, the old man did one of those politician handshakes (the two-handed one) and was sent stumbling off on his way into the sunset.

Needless to say I was pretty worked up about all of this.  Maintaining my composure was probably the most difficult part of this whole ordeal.  It’s not quite often that you have someone in elderly diapers attacking you for something totally irrelevant.   We’re told to respect the elderly but things like this really just sour your overall impression of them all.  I doubt this will ever happen again, but at least now I guess I’m prepared.

Oh, and on a side note, I saw American Gangster starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe.   It’s a great movie and a must-see for people who like police dramas.  The story is based on a true story.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 3:00 am and is filed under About Japan, Movies, Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.