The metro provided a funneled, concentrated view of the inhabitants of the world's largest city. There were many facts to digest, one, took a while to chew as well as to get through; a downtown station called Shinjuko handles around 34 million people a day.Women are given their own carriage to avoid the attention of gropers who, we are warned, take advantage of the crush to touch what isn't theirs.
I guess traveling by underground can often lead to sights not being seen or a sense of geogrpahy and layout muddled by the diminishing of distance but I never grew tired of the journeys even when it seemed like we had been hanging like meat from hooks for too long.It was too new to be tiring. We were part of the everyday, an immersion which was absorbing; the soaking up of other lives. Despite the omnipresecence of routine and efficiency there were flares of self-expression:the uber-ubiquitous salary man still has a furious or fuzzy or cuddly manga character dangling from their mobile phone ; the black suited worker still can go on safari with wild hair.
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