Fishnet and moustache

The evening commute back home is much less of a trudge than its morning counterpart, on 

most of the days.

Nonetheless, besides unrequested physical proximity, a decent share of elbow work may be

needed to get off the train, as the Red Sea of disgruntled passengers won't spontaneously

heed your striving for homecoming.

Having been raised in a different cultural environment one may not, on default settings,

possess the ability to resolutely push a total stranger aside in order to open oneself a

lucrative gangway; neither battle-honed moshpit skills would make significant résumé 

material in this very case: the blastbeat-fueled nihilistic fray hardly ever involved

grannies and babies, at least one may only hope.

Very conveniently though, Japanese etiquette has a tolerant stance towards scrummage-like

conduct in public places: as long as you pretend the other person is not there, it is perfectly 

acceptable to ram your shoulder into the aforementioned individual's back.

A whiff of "sumimasen" (sorry) caressing your lips will suffice for you to be deemed a fine 

gentleman by contemporary Tokyo standards,

no matter how many indented ribs shall mark your trail off the carriage.

Thus, cultural relativism merrily embraced for this occasion, my feet touch ground on the

station's platform and i let the flow of hungry commuters drag me up to the open air.

The city does understand its people's needs: hardly does exist here a train station without 

at least one supermarket in its immediate vicinity. As commuting time is often way 

over the one hour mark no one wants to make a further detour to buy some groceries before

finally heading home.

Neither do i, and so i slide smoothly on the rails of daily routine, over the crosswalk and

into the neighbourhood's discount supermarket: small, convenient, 

cheap but yet not to an undignified degree.

Thankfully, the Akore supermarket chain spares its customers the blaring of the customary

superfluous announcements and j-muzak which oftentimes turn the shopping environment in

a botched dystopian setting of crude, decibel-heavy, collective linguistic programming. 

The expected quiet is though being driven out from its lair amongst 

the aisles by somebody's snippets of angry Japanese. A Japanese person losing his temper will 

very likely end up speaking something which sounds as a different language altogether from his

mother tongue: farewell those soothing vowels, enter abrupt gutturals bursts; one could 

as well call this tantrum-generated language Angrynese.

And so it's the source of these loud Angrynesian remarks, such a one-sided upset conversation 

suggests the scoldee is on the other end of the phone line, I cautiously look for around me.

As much as Japan is one of the safest places on earth, the Japanese are surprisingly volatile

and eye-contact could yield nuisance, albeit hardly of the dangerous kind.

A glimpse of a fully tattooed arm, possibly a lower-echelon member of the local mob feels like 

showing off a bit today?, quite a wide and muscular chest wrapped in a gaudy t-shirt, moustache, 

sunglasses on at 7:30 pm. 

A thug, a lowlife, a hoodlum, signify both apparel and demeanor.

Until fishnets enter the field of vision. Soon to be joined by the orange thong underneath them.

The sight encounters not a single hair to indulge upon, during its fall down to a 

comparatively conservative pair of sneakers.

Since that first sighting I've seen the guy quite a few times around the neighbourhood.

Hardly silent even with no phone in hand: his inner monologue seems to have settled into the

outside world. Not necessarily ranting, on the contrary a self-content ironic tone sets the 

mood of his rather loud soliloquy

Sometimes power walking to unknown destinations in the morning, significantly more 

often standing beer in hand by the traffic lights of the busy intersection, where Taito ward

 invisibly morphs into its northern neighbour Arakawa.

As much as the brisk Tokyo air seems by now to have talked some reason into his lower-half 

dress-code, trousers seem not to have affected his habits that much: beercan and monologue 

are still holding their positions as the staples of his figure.

In a somewhat discomforting way i'm glad it is like that: had the approaching winter witnessed

his disappearance from the cityscape i'm afraid i could have missed him.