Third post in - you might think I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel to start talking about the subway here, but given I spend maybe an hour and a half on it every day getting to and from work, it's a bit like a second home. There's a depressing thought.

The subway here is not quite up there with Tokyo standards:

One of the advantages of not working in Tokyo. Christmas shopping there before I go home should be..an experience.

Apart from the pushing above, the subway system is all rather weirdly polite. There's a little office beside the ticket stiles and a man sits in there greeting and thanking nearly every single person who walks through. They pipe sounds of birds singing into the station. Though at night, that just lends itself to you feeling a bit like you're in the mines with the bloody warning canaries.

There's a women-only carriage for rush hour to ward off male gropers or grinders. Lesbians have a field day, though. I'm not quite sure what the punishment is for a man who gets on this carriage - lots of handbag bashing and dirty looks, if last week is anything to go by, when I saw it happen. The guy in question didn't seem that bothered, and he had a carful of lady loveliness to look at for half an hour. The dirty looks were a small price to pay for him, I think he liked his women angry.

Mostly everyone just sleeps, like dead people hanging forward, which is apparently because they're up all night playing video games. A bit of a generalisation perhaps but seems to be true. One advantage about Japan is it mostly does live up to most of the stereotypes - saves me from doing a lot of that description business really, so I can just post photos of toilets and prattle on about the subway.

That about sums it up I think. Do come back soon for a no-holds-barred account of the price of fruit and vegetables in Japan.