From The Onion´s "Our Dumb World:" "Brazil: People at their most beautiful, humanity at its ugliest."
I am fortunate not to own a car, because I wouldn´t drive here for anything., but also because the people watching is so great on the buses and subway. Sorry, I don´t have a great story to share about any particular experience, but I recently had an email from a friend in California who mentioned having driven to Venice Beach to, among other things, just enjoy watching the beautiful people. It made me realize that I don´t have to go anywhere to do that because I do the same thing every day whenever I go anywhere, even when I´m walking, for that matter.
Speaking of the subway, however indirectly, I have to say that some of my original enjoyment is fading. Some of that enthusiasm was just the satisfaction of having mastered the system and knowing I could use it. The Metró is easy to navigate and one never has to wait long for a train, but the cars are so packed with people at certain times of the day that I get a little claustrophobic, especially the three days each week when I have a language class that ends at 5 pm. Are there really people in the Tokyo subway whose job is to push and cram people into the subway cars? I´ve seen films, but who knows? There are no professional people pushers here, but it is hard to believe they could get many more people into each car than we all do on our own. Inevitably, once I´m in the car I have an image of there being an accident and me being stuck in a sardine can with panicked people screaming in a language I don´t understand. (Yes, I do understand more of the language all the time, but I am willing to bet I don´t understand panicky Português.) And people watching just isn´t that satisfying when your face is stuck in somebody else´s arm pit.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to my local Metró station about 6:20 pm because there was a classic movie I wanted to see at 7:00 in another part of town. I knew the system would be busy, so I was giving myself a little extra time, but I had no idea what busy meant. People always cue up in groups that are spaced on the platform to coincide roughly with the train doors, but I had never seen so many people. There must have been about 20-25 in each group, with more coming down the escalator all the time. The train arrived and, despite all of the pushing and shoving, I think only two people managed to squeeze into the car from my group. Then an empty train came trough the station without stopping; it was headed to the hub station 2 stops further down the line where there must have been even more people waiting. That is when I said screw it and went back home. It was my first and last experience with the subway during the heart of rush hour. As I said, the train I take routinely at 5 pm is always packed, but I am told the normal work day for most people is 9 to 6.
I think I mentioned there is a lot of pushing and shoving, right? Everybody wants to be the last person into the car regardless of who they have to step on to do it. Forget nice orderly lines and whether you were there first. Really, forget all of that. All of this probably doesn´t qualify as an instance of what The Onion meant by "humanity at its ugliest" (they were referring to gun violence, I think), but it isn´t pretty.
I used to say that I would be a better person, in a moral sense, if I never had to drive. Here I am a better person for avoiding the subways between 5 and 7:30.
Tchau
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