Lask weekend, I went back to my hometown in Hiroshima. The last time I went there I took an overnight express bus, which took more than 13 hours to get from Shinjuku to central Hiroshima. I had initially thought I would use it again because of the unbeatable price of 11,000 yen (it was 9000 yen last year), which is much less than the 20,000 or so for an airplane or the Shinkansen bullet train. But it soon turned out that the airplane fares were actually not that expensive if you made a reservation well ahead of the scheduled flight, such as a couple of weeks before. So, I pushed the trip back by a week and made a reservation for a round trip between Haneda and Hiroshima for a total fare of 33,560 yen.
The plane landed at Hiroshima Airport, and the Limousine Bus took me from there to JR Hiroshima Station in an hour. During the bus ride, there were more than a dozen foreign tourists, and one of them, a caucasian male in his late 20s or so, was sitting right behind the driver, absorbed in his phone. My seat was in the second row on the opposite side, so I had a clear view of the left side of his body. He had his right leg on his left thigh, and was wearing a pair of sandals. His right foot was protruding well beyond his seat into the narrow aisle. That's OK if you have the minimum manners and would pull your leg so that it won't touch someone who walked past you. But this guy apparently didn't have any manners and didn't move a bit when the driver walked past him a couple of times to check on something inside the bus, his trousers being clearly brushed against by the back of the sandal. The driver was obvioulsy busy and didn't say anything, but I bet he must have noticed it and felt uncomfortable.
I thought, "Would a Japanese do that? Even a delinquant or a criminal, if they were Japanese, wouldn't do that, would they? Perhaps he regards the profession inferior to himself? Does that have something to do with the issues of class or discrimination against certain jobs where he is from?"
On my way back to Tokyo, I took a Keihin Kyuko train from Haneda to Shinagawa. I only wore a backpack and a bag of souveniors, so when I entered the train I stood against the windows nearest where the cars are connected, facing the Priority Seats on the other side of the car. Passengers kept entering the car, and there came this pair of a middle-aged woman and a little girl of maybe 12 or 13, apparently her daughter. As soon as the woman entered the car, she unloaded this huge bag from her shoulder onto the floor with a thud. The bag was so big that it almost completely blocked an area just a few steps away from the doors, extending alomost completely across the aisle, as if the car was somehow flooding with water and the bag was intentionally placed there, like a giant sandbag, to block and stop the flow of water. They exchanged a few words in what sounded to me like Chinese, and quickly sat themselves on the Priority Seats, which is OK to me as long as there were no elderly or pregnant woman or anyone like that. The woman immediately started using her phone, with the girl staring blankly at nothing in particular, her mouth open like that of the statue of Kuya ejecting miniature figures of Buddha.
Soon a female passenger in her 20s came along the aisle, and she failed to walk past the bag and almost fell, her high-heels hitting the floor in a series of bangs and making clutterig noises. She somehow managed to recover, and I expected her to say something; she was dressed rather wildly mostly in black and silver and looked to be someone who would lose their temper easily; but she didn't say anything and just went to the next car past the Chinese mom and daughter. A few seconds later, there came another female passenger in her 30s, wearing a backpack. She stopped, looked at the bag, and, after a second or two of hesitation, appeared to have decided not to cross the dam and stayed where she was in the middle of the aisle near the doors. By this time I couldn't stand it anymore, and pointed and waved my finger at the bag in such a way that the girl would notice me. I tried to smile, and I guess I had one. The girl immediately noticed me and, looking surprised, whispered something to her mom. The mom looked at me suspiciously, and I repeated my finger movement, while keeping a smile on my face and saying in a small voice in Japanese that the bag was blocking the way, knowing full well the futility of the audible attempt at communication. The mom stared at me briefly, irritation clearly visible, and silently moved the bag to lie along the aisle, obvioulsy not liking me.
With the road cleared, the woman with backpack moved this way and sat next to the mom, who was again absorbed in her phone. After several stops, they got off, and I could see, across the windows, the mom pick up and wear the enormous, almost impossibly sized bag, on her back.
I would've understood the behavior as an exception and looked at the woman with more compassion if she looked exhausted, at a loss what to do, or lost, for example. But she looked just fine; no sweating or any sign of emotional distress or physical fatigue, just intently looking at her phone. And, would you place a big stupid bag across the aisle like that even if you were so fatigued physically or mentally that you just didn't have the presence of mind? I don't think so. I would definately place it at least along the aisle, not across it, as long as I had the energy to come onboard the train in the first place.
Is the lack of manners of these foreign tourists an exception rather than the norm even among their own peoples? Maybe; maybe not. This type of behavior by inbound tourists must be happening all over the country right now, and this must be at least one of the reasons for the success enjoyed by political parties, such as Sansei-to, during the last House of Councillors Election in June, that promoted slogans like "Japanese First!"
