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Section 79 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 December 01 Monday.
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Starting the day with someone else's suicide ... up at 0500 ... dark wet autumn day in Yokohama ... not too chilly, because the passage of the latest typhoon has dragged in a big mass of warm air from the Pacific ... at about 0615, on the train coming into Shibuya station, meaning to get on Tokyo's Yamanote line and head in the direction of Ikebukuro, when the suicide announcement comes over the train's public address system.
It doesn't actually say "All you suckers planning on heading to Ikebukuro on the Yamanote line, think again, because somebody jumped."
Rather, what it says, very politely, is something approximately like "Because of an incident involving a body, services on the Yamanote Line heading in the direction of Ikebukuro are delayed, and you are recommended to consider using the subway system."
All this is in Japanese, of course, and if your Japanese listening skills are close to zero then probably all you'll catch is "Yamanote" and "Ikebukuro," which will not necessarily leave you any the wiser. However, by this stage I'm very familiar with the key vocabulary item, which is "jinshin jiko," meaning, literally, "humanbody incident."
This doesn't in fact force the meaning "suicide," and it's conceivably possible that someone accidentally fell from the platform, which does occasionally happen. (Earlier this year, for example, there was an incident in which a pregnant woman fainted and fell onto the tracks -- she was rescued before the next train arrived.) However, while the "suicide" meaning is not forced, the statistical probability is that someone jumped.
By now, "jinshin jiko" is a part of my working vocabulary, an item that I can easily identify in either spoken or written Japanese. As an English teacher living and working in Japan I don't (as a rule) use Japanese when I'm teaching (rather, the standard classroom practice is to teach in the target language, which is English.) However, my Japanese ability sure comes in handy in getting from A to B, and there would be some days when I'd be lost without it.
So, avoiding the "humanbody incident" which has stalled the tracks of the Yamanote Line, the elevated railway which grips the center of Tokyo in an iron circle, I plunge into the subway system, which I know pretty will by now -- I've been using it for the last six years -- and navigate to where I want to go.
Today, my destination is in the heart of Tokyo, and I won't be going anywhere near Ikebukuro. But, later this week, I will in fact need to get to Ikebukuro early in the morning, and I'm afraid the Yamanote Line might be out of action again ... it's now failed me twice in about three weeks, though on the previous occasion the delay was because of some problem involving construction work rather than someone jumping.
With that in mind, while en route to where I'm going, I figure out how to get from Shibuya to Ikebukuro by subway ... one option, probably not the most efficient, is to change at Nagatacho and take the Yurakucho Line through to Ikebukuro ...
So that's part of my daily life in Japan: thinking up a workaround for the problems that are going to be caused by someone else's impending suicide ... not exactly the most cheerful way to start a dark wet day in autumn.
Why do people jump in front of trains? Because, in this country, firearms are hard to come by, which means that blowing your brains out is not an option.
Which prompts a story idea: angry Japanese worker shows up at the office, pulls a train out of his back pocket, fires it at the boss. Engine goes hurtling forward, carriages unfolding behind it, side of the skyscraper exploding, train hurtling through the wall into the gray workaday sky, carnage and destruction ....
Unfortunately, this is an intensely visual idea, not really a literary notion but something more appropriate for a comic book ... if I could draw, I could make something of it, a surreal one-page story ... but, because the concept is so visual, it doesn't work so well in words ... also, plotwise, I can't think where to take it ... government bans trains because people are shooting each other with them? Doesn't work, somehow ....
A few hours later I'm in an elementary school teaching about Father Christmas (or, as he is known in Japan, "Santa.") By the time I'm done, I've pretty much forgotten about the morning's (presumed) suicide. But, quite possibly, some poor bastard has spent the whole day planning where he's going to jump, and how, and when.
Section 79 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 December 05 Friday.
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The line I use to commute from my part of Yokohama to Tokyo's Shibuya Station is the Tōkyū Tōyoko Line, and today, when I was heading back to Yokohama from Tokyo, I got to Shibuya Station and found the Tōyoko Line was in disarray.
The express trains weren't running, the departure times for the remaining trains were not being displayed (the trains were leaving when the signal lights went green) and, as I entered the station, railway staff were handing out little bits of paper to passengers who were making for the exits.
I think these little bits of paper were official "the train this person was travelling on didn't make it to its destination in time" certificates - I forget what these are called, but they're a standard feature of Japanese life. If your commuter train is late because someone jumped in front of it (or whatever) then there's a good chance that someone will be handing out these bits of paper when you arrive at your destination.
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