touching women in Japan - chikan

So it's the next day now. I had a nice

night. I met up with the Japanese guy who

used to live here, and he brought 2 of his

friends. They were nice. One of them was

pretty cute, and they spoke really good

English, so we spoke English most of the

time. But what I really wanted to talk

about was those illustrations at the

beginning of the video. They basically

say, um, if you see someone

sexually harassing someone, that you

should report it. Okay, let me try

explaining it again. My voice is still

strange because I've still got this stupid

cold. I've still got the cough. Okay, so

there's this word in Japanese called

chikan, and it basically means to touch

someone. Like on the train, when the

trains get really crowded, Sometimes men

will just touch women and they do it

really sneakily. And most of the time the

women don't really do anything. They don't

scream or react. They just pretend to

ignore it. And that's how so many men get

away with it because no one reports it and

no one does anything to stop it from

happening. So they have all these posters

around saying if you, if you see this

happening, report it to the train people

or the police. And they

also have like a special train cart for

women only, so it's all like pink and it

says women only. But usually you get a few

men in there as well. I actually rode it

by accident a few times. Like, I just

walked onto the train and then I looked up

and I noticed that everyone were women,

and I was like, oh no. I'm on the

women-only train again. So that can be

kind of awkward. We don't really have

these kind of things in the UK because I

don't really think touching happens much

on the trains. I don't know about London,

but if you go to London or any train

station in the UK, there's no signs saying

stop touching people, and there's no

women-only cars. I think that it's because

if you try doing that in a Western

country, you'd either get— the women would

probably slap you, or she'd start

screaming, and then a bunch of people

would come over and like beat the crap out

of you or tell you to stop, or they might,

they might report you to the police. So

people don't really do that, especially in

the UK. But in Japan, it just seems like

no one reports it. The women don't seem to

do anything. They just accept it. So the

men just get away with it. So everyone—

not everyone, but a lot of people seem to

do it. I think I heard somewhere that if

you ask a Japanese woman if they've been

sexually touched on the train before,

all— everyone would say that they've had

it happen to them at least once in their

life. But it's not easy. I can understand

why the Japanese woman women don't do

anything because imagine you're on a

crowded, packed train and then suddenly

you feel like someone's touching your leg

or something. Well, what are you gonna do?

You're just gonna start screaming, or

you're gonna try and find out who did it

and slap them in the middle of a crowded

train? And it's all crowded and packed,

people are standing right next to each

other. You don't know, you don't know

who's done it, and it's so easy for the

man to just quickly whip down his hand and

put his hands in his pocket or pretend

that it wasn't him or pretend that it was

a mistake and he didn't mean it. So it's a

tricky situation. Maybe if the women here

became more aggressive, it would stop men

from doing it because Japanese women are

kind of known to be not really aggressive,

kind of timid, like they don't really want

to make a fuss or cause any problems,

which is kind of the problem, because if

they made a big fuss about it and screamed

and embarrassed the guy who touched them,

then it would happen a lot less, I think.

So yeah, I thought that was interesting,

like that little cartoon illustration.

Just wanted to talk about that for a bit.

About last night, we just went to like an

izakaya, which is a bar restaurant. It's

not really a restaurant because people

Usually just go there for drinks,

and you can get food, but the food's

really overpriced. So I spent no.

There's four of us. We went by with four

people, and the total came to twelve

thousand yen, which is like it's like

eighty to ninety pounds. So divided by

four, I had to pay about three thousand

yen, which is about twenty twenty-five

pounds, and I wasn't even even full up.

I wasn't even full up and had to come home

and get something else to eat. They give

you— the food's really nice, but they

give you really small portions and it's

really expensive. Like, you order a plate

of beef, like a steak, and they only give

you about 5 tiny pieces and it costs

about— I don't even know, like ¥800,

maybe £5 for the dish, and you have to

share it with 4 people, so it doesn't— it

It doesn't really go very far. It's not

really to fill you up. It's just to— it's

just like something to snack on while you

drink beer and have a chat. So yeah,

it's very expensive, but it was nice.

It was nice to meet new people,

I guess. Anyway, it's like— it's 2

PM right now. I just woke up. I have to go

and have my coffee. Where is it? Coffee's

down there. And I got Some bread,

some jam.

Good old strawberry jam.