10 bizarre displays of Tokyo humanity

15 May 2003, 18:16

In the past year and a half I have seen a lot of bizarre things in Tokyo. They are so commonplace that I dismiss most of them with an “Oh yeah, whatsername’s at it again; standing on her head with a rosebush growing out her arse” kind of air. Here are some of the stranger “What the…?” sights I remembered to write down:

1. A woman on a train wearing a dead animal around her neck. Some people might call this a fur, but the little fella (perhaps a mink?) had a spring clasp in his mouth which attached him to his tail and he kept staring at me with mournful peepers. People tell me these “furs” used to be popular in Australia in our grandparent’s day, but I’ve never heard of this shit.

2. A local man, dressed completely in black and wearing an inch of face make-up, carrying (and rocking) two baby dolls in his arms. He makes frequent appearances in the Ikebukuro area, always with dolls in tow.

3. A young guy on a bicycle, stopped on the side of our street, curling his eyelashes.

4. The same guy (minus the bicycle), stopped on the side of our street, plucking his nose hairs.

5. A snoring (no doubt soused) man passed out on the floor of a morning peak-hour Yamanote train. True to Japanese manners, commuters step over the guy to get off the train, rather than wake him.

6. A young man wearing a kamikaze headband, doing karate chops (accompanied by ear-splitting “grunts”) while power-walking down the length of Ikebukuro station.

7. Five salary men doing star-jumps on an inner-city street before work. This activity is popular among Japanese companies as a “morale-builder”. How making their employees sweat and heave in front of hundreds of commuters accomplishes this, I’m not entirely sure.

8. Salary men on trains, on train platforms or waiting for traffic lights, practicing their golf swings.

9. A Salary man (why do they all seem to be salary men?) wearing stockings beneath his trousers. This happens a lot.

10. A man carrying a (live) squirrel on his shoulder, the squirrel “anchored” to his shoulder by fishing line and a small sinker. It was a night-time peak-hour train, the squirrel was maybe 3 inches from my face and he kept running around the guys back and returning to look at me inquisitively before taking off again. (I was minor-league-tipsy when I saw this so I’m pretty sure it happened).

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