Sitting on the Sobu is usually just like a cramped café. I always get a seat (or else I don’t get on the train), and there are people all around me. I always have my own little space. My table is my briefcase across my lap. (The items on my table are usually a device to play video games (a 3DS or a Vita, never both), my smart phone, and depending on the season, some tissues.) It’s crowded, but I’m not actually with anybody, and I feel a bubble around myself. This bubble does not burst even if something falls onto my lap, the person beside me is sleeping on my shoulder, or the person standing in front of me’s foot is touching mine. The bubble on the train is perhaps stronger than most bubbles are.

One day, in between Chiba and Nishi-Chiba my bubble was popped. I suppose in a way I popped it myself, but only in a natural way possible. Everything, for better or worse, was done without thinking.

Between Chiba and Nishi-Chiba, there’re always a lot of high school students, and for some reason I get the feeling that the majority of them are girls (I say this without conviction as I may only notice the girls, which is something I wouldn’t really want to admit). They come on the train in groups, never sit down, and giggle a bunch until the next stop- Nishi-Chiba- and then get off. I am able to view about 2 minutes of their lives every day. Usually the two minutes look very happy, but I am sure I am not seeing everything. Perhaps they have the energy to put on brave faces for those two minutes.

One day, a young high school girl had what I assumed was a friend with her. It was a foreign looking guy that looked a little older, but then again teenagers from overseas often look much older compared to their Japanese counterparts. I immediately assumed that he was a new exchange student, and was doing a homestay at her house. I thought for a second that it was strange to place him in a house where the high school student is a girl, but I didn’t think much of it.

This high school girl was by herself, excluding the foreign guy who was following her. I thought she was at times saying something to him, but I was not sure if it was small talk, directions, or awkward replies to stop him from talking. I’m not sure if her friends just weren’t with her that day. I may’ve thought that they weren’t because they were nervous about speaking English, and they thought they would leave their English-speaking friend to what she did best. I’m not sure if she spoke English though. I later found out about the foreign guy’s English ability.

As the two of them got on the train to stand in front of me, the foreign guy was mumbling something to the girl, and then wanted to do something between shaking and holding her hand. The girl didn’t really seem to understand, but obliged to shake the guys hand, and then they continued to stand there. At this point, something seemed off about the guy, and the easiest explanation was that his mind was fucked up on drugs. It could have been a million things, but this was the easiest explanation.

The girl’s smile the first time she agreed to shake his hand was a smile that perhaps could have been mistaken for being happy by someone new to Japan, but it most definitely was not. She was awkward, scared, and didn’t know what to do. I still wasn’t sure if this guy was a foreign exchange student, or knew her at all, but he was definitely making her feel uncomfortable.

The next time he tried to shake her hand, again mumbling something, she avoided eye contact with him, stopped smiling, looked down and rapidly shook her head. The guy then tried to use what seemed like persuasive language to do it again, but it was not any English or Japanese that I could understand. He either didn’t mind that the girl was incredibly uncomfortable and scared, or he didn’t realize that she was. Again, my theory was that he was fucked up on drugs, and only wanted to touch a Japanese high school girl’s hand, which isn’t an excuse, but just what I assumed.

Usually I think it is very easy for a white male to make his presence known on a train, and when that presence is known, it usually leads to a situation defusing. I remember once on the Uchibo Line there were two junior high school girls happily chattering away, and then the old Japanese man beside them yelled very loudly, “shut up!” The girls got really quiet, didn’t say anything until the next stop, and when the next stop came they got off the train, and got on a different carriage. It was almost all according to a drill they had practiced many times on what to do if a weird person confronts them. Meanwhile, I continued to give the old man the death stare for a few minutes. He noticed, and gave an apology to me.

I think I had forgotten that you don’t usually give death stares to angry people on the train, at least not in Canada or any other foreign country I have been to. I know that Japanese people don’t do it in Japan as well, but there’s something that came with the experience of being a foreigner in Japan that seemed to make me feel it’s almost my duty to try and defuse situations by doing things I couldn’t do in my home country, and the people around me can’t do in there’s. Also, it’s an incredibly passive aggressive action. I’m not really confronting anything. I’m not speaking or passing moral judgment: I’m just letting a look know that the situation pisses me off or whatever. More than the action having value infused in it, I feel like it is a tool that can be effectively used in certain situations. I could be overanalyzing or misanalysing it. It’s not too important.

So I stared at him. I stare and I stare. He noticed I was doing so quicker than people usually notice. He found it funny that I was staring at him, or at least he started to smile in what seems like disbelief. He started staring back at me with a big smile. The most important part of the story is that at this point I have the attention of the assumed fucked-up-on-drugs foreigner, and the high school girl who he was harassing could leave the area and rejoin some friends of hers. (We can ignore that her friends let her be when the guy was bugging her, presumably at least from the station. Or there’s still the theory of her being a part of his host family I guess.) He stares. I stare. It honestly has never really played out like that before. He did that thing where you open your eyes a little wider and move your head a little closer to the person you’re staring at (me).

I then felt something that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I feel scared for my safety. In these few seconds where we are staring at each other, me with a death stare and him with a goofy grin, I really had a lot of time to consciously think about the experience. Who was I to be scared? If a beer gutted 30-year-old male is scared, then how does the little 15-year-old high school girl feel? I did the only thing that I could think to do, which was to ask the presumably drugged-up-foreigner a question in English.

“Are you alright?”

“What?”

“You, are you alright?”

Another foreigner “tool” to gain an upper hand in a situation that thinks needs defusing is to speak English. There’s never any reason to yell (at least in my warped head there isn’t), and so I sometimes calmly ask questions to people. This is usually not to irate foreigners, but to Japanese people. It takes them off guard, and everyone’s happy and calm in the end.

Finally his response was, “Yeah, man… yeah”

He couldn’t speak English very well, but he knew “cool English”. He knew of English, he had lived a life with English in his periphery, but it was not something he had a command of. I imagine he’s from Syria at this point because he kind of reminds me of a Syrian classmate I had. Cool guy, came across like a dick, and could only speak bits of “cool English”. The Syrian classmate had amazing Japanese, and the university we were at allowed him to stay more than the usual one year because of the horrible civil war in his country. I don’t think my Syrian classmate was actually a dick though; he just didn’t prescribe to whatever rules I have set out for all of humanity. I doubt he tried to touch high school girls’ hands on their commute to school. I hope not at least.

Anyways, the drugged-up-guy was not my Syrian classmate. He was a drugged up guy. I asked him another question.

“It seemed like something was wrong. Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

“Yeah… yeah… “

Okay, situation defused. Nothing is wrong. We could all deal with the situation in our calm 30cm voices with no issues.

He started holding onto the vertical pole dividing my seat and the seat of the person beside me. This gives him the ability to give a not-so-subtle middle finger in my direction, and also mumble an ever so quiet “fuck you”.

I learned at this time that the situation was not defused.

Then I see under his shirt this giant bright tattoo. Perhaps due to my long residence in Japan, I suddenly equate this with being some part of a scary underground gang. He’s no longer just an exchange student new to the country being a bit pervy on his host sister, but he’s a gang member telling me to fuck myself, thinking of ways to skin me alive. I could only ask another question.

“What’s that?”

“Huh?”

“I thought I heard you say something. Did you say something?”

“No man… no man… no”

“You didn’t say anything? Are you sure?”

“No man.. no man…”

Silence. Hand back on the bar. Quietly he said again to me, “fuck you… fuck you…”

I suppose American movies are good for ensuring the world knows basic swear words.

My death stare has evaporated and the only thing I know to do is to ensure he doesn’t think I’m in any way intimidated by him, and laugh in his face as much as I can. I think this is what I used to do if I was ever being bullied in school. It wasn’t always effective.

“I think I heard you say something again. You seem angry. Are you angry?”

“…”

“Why are you angry?”

“Not angry… not angry”

“You’re not angry? You didn’t just say, ‘fuck you’ a few times?”

“No man… no man…”

The train starts to slow down, and we are reaching Nishi-Chiba. At this point I am thinking my entire commute is going to be with this idiot who must be from an underground gang who kidnaps young high school girls and white guys in their 30s who have beer guts. However, after all the high school girls get off, he started moving towards the door too. Maybe he is just a new exchange student?

When he gets to the door of the train, he stops again, and in a louder voice he says, “fuck you! Fuck you!”

Now that there’s some distance, he’s getting angrier. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is a surefire sign that he’s just a little shithead, because he cannot be angry to my face, but only when he knows there will soon be a barrier between us.

So all I can do at this point is laugh. I’m not as cool as perhaps I am making myself sound though, my heart is beating fast, and I feel scared that I’m going to get stabbed in a few seconds. After I’m stabbed to death, there would be the news that will talk about these two foreigners who got into a fight on the Sobu Line, and there would be panels talking about how foreigners are violent and its all my fault, and then due to my death visa regulations for Canadians would get a lot stricter. However perhaps the people around us would take how I valiantly stood up for some high school girl by staring quietly and angrily, and there would be parades for the silent Canadian who just wanted to save the world one high school student at a time.

Anyways, he finally got off the train. At this point he decided to knock on the window glass behind me. I decided that I wouldn’t turn around, but I will only do a fake confident laugh so all the people around me know that I am not scared, and that I am like the heroes in the American moves (with a beer gut).

The knocking continued, and it eventually became banging, frantic banging. At least he was not following those high school girls. I imagined the banging must’ve hurt his hands after he got out of his drug-frenzied state. He was banging away as the train slowly started to pull away from Nishi-Chiba and start on its way to Inage. Only then when the train pulled away did I make eye contact with the frenzied idiot, so he could see me shake my head and laugh.

At this moment I started to process a few things that I had not processed before. Two highs school girls were talking, and commented to each other how it was amazing that foreigners can just talk to people they don’t know like that. My bravery of looking at someone is getting explained away by being foreign. I didn’t think that was fair at the time.

I then thought consciously about my fellow commuters, who I have been commuting with for over a year, and have never said a word to. There were walls and ideas broken about myself, and that made me feel naked and vulnerable. On a train commute, one can quite easily control how they are being presented, as there are few things you can do that can be judged by others. Are you on your smart phone the entire train ride? Do you sleep on someone’ s shoulder? Do you play really cool video games on your 3DS or Vita on top of your briefcase table? There are really only a few options.

I also realize how incredibly fast my heart is beating. I post what happened on Twitter to try and normalize the experience, and make myself feel better. I try to think of myself as someone that’s not a coward getting scared at the smallest confrontation. I think about how Japan really is the only country that I can live in now.

I dread the next day, when perhaps he will be back on the train to make my life a living hell. I get flashbacks to high school when I did have the feeling that tomorrow there would be somebody I would have to be near who would want to make my life a living hell. I then feel a lot more weak and scared than I had felt in a very long time. The confidence of the death stare was behind me due to some little shit with big tattoos wanting to touch a high school girl’s hand.

I felt like a coward.

I remember this drugged up neo-Nazi couple that I came across at Surrey Central bus station on my way home from university over ten years ago. They were screaming “heil Hitler” and talking about killing foreigners in loud voices. All I did was sit beside an old Indo-Canadian man, and talked about how times were changing. I didn’t confront the neo-Nazi couple. A woman in her 40s told them to shut up. The neo-Nazi woman punched her in the face, and at this point the people around me woke out of their bubbles to help. After I see other people standing up, I stand up too. The neo-Nazis get scared, and run off. Police are called.

I talked to another young guy how we were totally ready to get in there. We were totally ready to stand up to the neo-Nazis. We were totally going to punch them.

The drugged up foreigner on the Sobu line never came back. The high school girls are laughing on the train as usual. I think one night as I was leaving the ticket gate at Chiba Station I see the foreigner once again, but he’s walking fast in the other direction, and I had no intention of slowing down.

My bubble on the train is back. My Vita or 3DS are back on the table I created with my briefcase. I’m studying kanji these days.