women only

yeah, we've all seen it before. the sardine stuffed trains of tokyo. famous the world around. the train attendants who are employed only for the rush hours to stand there and literally push in the hordes with their white, gloved hands.
it's suffocating. not at all fun. i've never been in a situation where i could lift up both of my feet at the same time and still stay standing. when i worked in tokyo and had to suffer the trains for a year, my second month into the torture i thought i was pretty sleek by figuring out that if i woke just a little earlier and rode on the train heading in the opposite direction, the train would go back a few stations to the end of the line, and then just restart on its way to tokyo. i was guaranteed a seat and a little sanctity from the torment of it all. i managed to knit a scarf before someone told on me and i was publicly humiliated by the train man and warned never to be shifty again. back to life as a sardine...
i was also chikan'ed. i think most women have had some kind of chikan experience on the trains. i wonder sometimes if i might have made mine up because it was just so peculiar. i somehow found myself surrounded by 4 very ordinary looking business men masturbating on me at the same time. i'm not sure if they'd prearranged it altogether or if one caught on to the other and saw me doing nothing much about it, and thought they'd have a go. it doesn't matter either way. it's a long time ago, and whilst it's a bit of a disgusting experience, i was most shocked and disappointed at myself for being frozen into non-reaction as it happened and after they stealthily slipped off at the next train stop to go about their day of business and sit down to dinner with the kids and wife at the end of it. so i guess its because of women like me that this problem doesn't seem to fade. that with our voiceless stance we put forth a message of behavioural reinforcement.
the women-only carriages on peak hour trains is also old news. but i always feel very conflicted about its existence. from my little chikan experience, and altogether unrelated discomfort at being pressed up against so many men with cigarette breath in the mornings and beer breath of an evening, and also the fact that there's most often a seat in the ladies carriages - i always opt for these carriages during times that they're available. and i find it slightly amusing in a bit of an unfair, sadistic way, when the stray man wanders on and the train man bursts out of his drivers' box to hush him away.
but on the other hand, i wonder if the existence of these carriages just accepts and recognises the fact that there is a problem that needs to be solved, and that this seems to be the only solution. it's not really a solution. it's just a safe place to be until the solution is found, but i think perhaps whilst the idea was born of good intentions, it somehow becomes some kind of subconscious approval of the problem itself. and of course there are the smarty pants who assume that the ladies on the mixed-sex carriages are only there because they're up for a good time...argh. it's all a little complicated. i just don't know. and i'm going to probably keep riding the ladies carriages for some time to come, just as i hope to think that i have learnt to speak out at times of panic to protect myself...