In parts 1 and 2, Mr. Teruya, a 62 year old businessman, was shocked when an office lady stood up to let him sit down. Her actions made him realise that he was getting old. Meanwhile, Andy, a young Caucasian, spent much of the night drinking, and fell asleep on a bench next to the river. Smelling of alcohol and cigarrettes, the dirty Andy got onto Mr. Teruya’s early morning train, and stood in front of his seat.
Part 3:
Wishing to put a barrier between himself and this foreigner who smelled of alcohol, Mr. Teruya half stood and lifted his newspaper from the luggage rack.
Andy jerked his head twice to stop himself from drifting to sleep and began a large burp. It tasted of bile, amongst other things. He looked down at the businessman who had just pulled down a newspaper. He was a typical salaryman, he thought, much like the rows of similar workers in the seats to either side. But Andy noticed that this businessman was staring at him, and he didn’t like it. After staring disapprovingly at Andy for a moment, the man’s gaze went back to the front page of his newspaper. “Can’t a foreigner stand on a train for five minutes without being stared at as if he were a Martian?” thought Andy.
Andy looked at the back of the businessman’s paper. It seemed to be a pretty low class of tabloid, because the type was big and there were lots of pictures. There was a panel showing a full figured lady in a bikini, holding a frothing glass of beer. Andy didn’t know what headline news could have required such a picture: New study shows that beer tastes better in a bikini?
The businessman looked again at Andy and followed his gaze to the back of his newspaper. In apparent irritation, he folded the paper in half, covering the girl in the bikini.
“Damn it!” thought Andy. “So it’s like that, is it?”
He reached out a chubby finger and lifted the back of the paper, so that the bikini clad beauty was visible again. He raised an eyebrow at the businessman in a humorous gesture.
Mr. Teruya was shocked to see the end of his paper lifted by the foreigner. He felt his heartbeat quicken as he saw the man open his eyes wide and stare at him challengingly. Not quite knowing what to do, he lifted up the paper and slapped the foreigner’s finger with an open palm. He prayed that the office lady hadn’t seen the incident but he was too ashamed to look for her. He pulled the paper close to his face and tried to concentrate on an article on a politician’s misuse of public funds.
Andy couldn’t believe that the man had slapped his finger. “What arrogance!” he thought. “What happened to your sense of humour?”
Feeling stung and embarrassed, Andy fell back upon his general stress response. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his lighter and cigarettes. It was only when he had them in his shaking hand that he realised he wouldn’t be able to smoke on the train.
Mr. Teruya tried to calm himself. To be thrown on the scrapheap of old age and now this? He found a song playing at the edge of his mind. It was by Imawano Kiyoshiro. He was singing that Papa in the daytime was shining. He was working up a good sweat, Papa in the daytime is a man. It had been used in an advert for a construction company. Several lines of the song were going round and round his mind in a tight loop.
Mr. Teruya moved the paper back to a more natural distance from his face. He looked up and to the right, searching for the office lady. But she was gone. Maybe she had found a seat somewhere further down the train, or maybe she had gotten off. He had lost her.
Looking back at the foreigner, he found that the fool had pulled out a packet of cigarettes and was apparently about to start smoking on the increasingly packed commuter train. He glared at the man, took a long disapproving look at the cigarettes, tutted loudly and then went back to his paper, turning over the page and carefully folding it over so as to take up less space.
Andy was shuffling the cigarettes and lighter around in his hands when the man stared at him with disgust and tried to shame him with a loud tut. An ache had sprung up behind his nose and was spreading into a bad headache. “He’s such an important businessman that he can’t take a simple joke,” he thought. He watched the man carefully and defiantly fold his all important newspaper, jealously guarding its bikini girls.
Andy put his cigarettes away and felt a whim bubble up to the surface of his mind. Before he had time to question the wisdom of what he was doing, he stuck out his lighter and set the bottom of the businessman’s newspaper on fire.
Vocabulary:
to jerk (your
head) – to move (your head) with a sudden, sharp movement
bile – a bitter
fluid which helps the stomach to digest food
a tabloid – a
newspaper aimed at less well educated readers, often featuring sports stories
or celebrity gossip
to be thrown on
the scrapheap – to be thrown away or rejected as useless
packed – of a
train, room, etc., filled with many people
to tut – to make
a slight noise with your tongue and the top of your mouth, generally indicating
disappointment or disapproval
a whim – a sudden
desire or change of mind, especially one that is unusual or unexplained
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