[UA] Tokyo Subway

[Matthew Rowan Norwood]

I've been thinking a lot about the Tokyo subway 
recently. I visited with my brother when I was 14, he 
17, and we two 6-foot-plus white barbarians towered over 
the other train riders. I recently started taking the 
subway to work in Boston, and the inability of people 
here to really _pack_ a train is annoying.

Salon had an interesting article on it today. I was 
particularly struck by the last image in this excerpt, 
and it got me thinking about using it as a UA setting:


Throwing yourself into the hands of the Japanese
rail system is like entering a giant creature's belly -- 
a
massive organism where everything happens quickly
and by large measures. More than 100,000 people
pass through the enormous and ugly Tokyo train
station every day -- sometimes many more, shoved
into place during rush hours by white-gloved,
well-groomed handlers. At such times, Mikio says in
his precise English, "You are like a water molecule
in water. You cannot go where you want to go." He
tells me a story of a briefcase that was carried away
by closely packed bodies, floating across the car, out
of reach and never falling to the floor. 

http://salon.com/people/feature/2000/12/08/japanese_trai
ns/index.html

-Matt Norwood

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