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これはおよそ八年前、わたしが六十代の半ばの頃、地下鉄で実際に遭遇した出来事を英文にしてみたものです。その頃に出会ったイギリス人のJmyにチェックしてもらいました。下線部は直して貰った箇所で、それ故いまでも彼に感謝しています。

An incident in a Tokyo subway train
I was on my way back from work in Tokyo and got on a subway. It was an express train, crowded with people hurrying home. I looked for a vacant seat in vain and stood near the door opposite the one I entered. I was tired, an old man on the wrong side of sixty, but even the priority seats for the physically challenged, pregnant, people with infants and the aged were all occupied. Leaning on the door, I glanced through the people and glimpsed a young man sitting on one corner of the priority seat, headphones over the ears.
When the train stopped next, several people came on. A tall, lanky man who looked to be in his thirties barged into two elderly women who were standing near me at the door enjoying small talk. Pushed to the side, one woman faltered, brushing against me. The man fought his way inside. There was something determined and desperate about the way he moved. He also had an angular gait almost like a limp. Shouting some inarticulate words, he forced the young man with headphones off this seat. “This is a priority seat, isn’t it. I am entitled to it. I am handicapped.” Actually he threatened and drove the young man off with a terrible growl. Even when he seated he hurled abuse at the young man saying something like, “Stop the goddamn music. I hate it. You fucking idiot. Shut it off.” Taken aback, the young man just stood, staring back at the fierce, growling man like a mouse caught in the glare of a wild cat. Silence fell in the train, a casual pool of foul air accumulating around.
At the next statin the train stopped where our incident begins. A huge figure loomed before me and the next moment I noticed a wall of a big man’s back looking for room among dwarfs. He found it in front of the crazy cat man and proceeded there. Obviously he was a foreigner. He stood, I determined, over 2 meters tall and looked nearly as wide. By our standards, it is an impossible size for human being. `How big a man he is! He is humongous, literally.` With mixed admiration and astonishment, I gazed at the massive shoulders hunched forward, as he busied himself doing some business with his mobile phone. For a while, it was quiet, just crowded. But, all of a sudden, the metallic cat call cried out again. “Hell with your cellphone. Stop it.” The big man stopped moving his fingers and stood still, looking down at the man below. “Hell with you.” Again came dirty language. The huge guy swiveled around as if to look and check something. I saw his profile and judged he was an Indian. He looked barely annoyed as would have been the case with any native Japanese, but, instead, he just looked a little surprised and questioning. - `Is this man down in front a Japanese? He is too straightforward to be Japanese.` - He looked down again, cellphone in hand, for which the crazy man reached, tried to grab hold of it, crying. “Throw it away, your fucking phone. It’s a nuisance. Don’t you know?” He tried to grab again, moving his hand frantically and pushed the humongous man. The Indian guy instantly flared up, punching the shouting man on the face. His mighty fist hit the cat man’s eyebrow region and blood spurted. At that moment, I noticed the cat man had rather clean-cut facial features. I can even say handsome by people’s standards. Bloody handsome face, however, never stopped shouting. Words sometimes unintelligible kept cursing out. Then I heard somebody say, “Ignore him, ignore him.” (obviously to the big man.) A woman’s sharp voice followed. Surprised, I looked around to see a young woman sitting on the priority seat diagonally opposite the crazy cat. She looked in her early twenties, a slender, charming woman. “Get out, you imbecile.” She shrieked (at the cat man.) I was too astonished at this scene that had never been even imaginable back in my youth to realize right on the spot that Japan has changed. The bruised wild cat shot back. “Why, you, of all sluts.” “Shut up, you idiot!” Verbal missiles traded fire. All in all, there was no reproaching air afloat against the Indian man. Everybody seemed, if not clearly on his side, but apparently never on the side of the cat man. “Ignore him.” Someone’s voice repeated sounding in the foreigner’s favor. I also felt sorry for the huge guy from abroad.

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A Tokyo Girl

She’s a Tokyo girl, no longer a virgin, divorced once, now in her mid-thirties, still a girl. She’s got 3 pairs of eyeglasses, each as thick as the others, but different in colour, say, red, blue and white. She works downtown Tokyo, 5 days a week, commutes an hour one way. She wears white in the Tokyo tube for obscurity. She thinks herself beautiful but doesn’t care very much for attention and wears white glasses. Off the tube and out onto the Tokyo street she walks to work. She walks off the main street into an alley and stops one minute to work to change her glasses to red for attention as no one’s around. One minute walk and into the building she goes and changes the glasses to blue to prepare for the day. She looks blue and sighs blue and works blue all day long till evening. She’s sure of her boss being so keen on her as to be horny so she keeps herself on guard all day breathing blue. She dabbles in French assuming the tongue to have magical power and whispers in French, “Je suis une belle femme.” fully aware of him being within earshot. And out she cries as he appears from around the cubicle, “Oh, my, I didn’t know you were there!” The boss looks dubious, unable to comprehend what she means. She lives in a world of her own creation so she thinks what she thinks is what others think and takes for granted the dubiousness on his face as a telltale sign of libido. He is ready to assault me. “I must flee.” Flurried she mumbles again into her blouse, unbuttoned down barely enough to show her shallow cleavage. He calls to her asking what she meant by “J’sus what?” which she takes as an overture for mating consent and up she stands on her feet. You know I’m so beautiful you can’t forgo having me! Again she cries but only inwardly. She rushes out the door into the toilet and locks herself up ready to scream but passes out instead trapped inside. When she comes around, she hears a man whisper “Are you okay?” which she construes “Are you ready to make love?” and closes her mouth tight but cannot keep her legs closed as they open as if in some reflex responses. “Oh, my,” she comes to herself and looks around to see if no one was around to witness her seeing herself. Trapped, she’s vaguely aware of her being and tries hard to escape. “Je suis belle.” She cries out the key words. Overtaken by exhaustion, however, she realizes the magic doesn’t work and disappointed she now applies herself to work. It’s getting on for 4 o’clock. The office is to close at 5. One hour left to live the life of a woman a girl woman has to live. She works. Still a girl in Tokyo she keeps on working.

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A Tokyo Girl

She’s a Tokyo girl, no longer a virgin, divorced once, now in her mid-thirties, still a girl. She’s got 3 pairs of eyeglasses, each as thick as the others, but different in colour, say, red, blue and white. She works downtown Tokyo, 5 days a week, commutes an hour one way. She wears white in the Tokyo tube for obscurity. She thinks herself beautiful but doesn’t care very much for attention and wears white glasses. Off the tube and out onto the Tokyo street she walks to work. She walks off the main street into an alley and stops one minute to work to change her glasses to red for attention as no one’s around. One minute walk and into the building she goes and changes the glasses to blue to prepare for the day. She looks blue and sighs blue and works blue all day long till evening. She’s sure of her boss being so keen on her as to be horny so she keeps herself on guard all day breathing blue. She dabbles in French assuming the tongue to have magical power and whispers in French, “Je suis une belle femme.” fully aware of him being within earshot. And out she cries as he appears from around the cubicle, “Oh, my, I didn’t know you were there!” The boss looks dubious, unable to comprehend what she means. She lives in a world of her own creation so she thinks what she thinks is what others think and takes for granted the dubiousness on his face as a telltale sign of libido. He is ready to assault me. “I must flee.” Flurried she mumbles again into her blouse, unbuttoned down barely enough to show her shallow cleavage. He calls to her asking what she meant by “J’sus what?” which she takes as an overture for mating consent and up she stands on her feet. You know I’m so beautiful you can’t forgo having me! Again she cries but only inwardly. She rushes out the door into the toilet and locks herself up ready to scream but passes out instead trapped inside. When she comes around, she hears a man whisper “Are you okay?” which she construes “Are you ready to make love?” and closes her mouth tight but cannot keep her legs closed as they open as if in some reflex responses. “Oh, my,” she comes to herself and looks around to see if no one was around to witness her seeing herself. Trapped, she’s vaguely aware of her being and tries hard to escape. “Je suis belle.” She cries out the key words. Overtaken by exhaustion, however, she realizes the magic doesn’t work and disappointed she now applies herself to work. It’s getting on for 4 o’clock. The office is to close at 5. One hour left to live the life of a woman a girl woman has to live. She works. Still a girl in Tokyo she keeps on working.

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  British Balance Sense

  One day I was sitting in a countryside pub somewhere way back in the Cornwall Peninsular, in the southwestern part of Britain. I had been in this pub the previuos year. Nothing seemed to have changed since then. But when nature called me and I went off looking for the lavatory to relieve myself, it was nowhere to be found on the ground floor. They had, as I discovered soon, relocated it up to the first floor. 

  Resuming my seat at the bar, I spoke to a man behind the counter in an attempt to engage him in conversation. I asked him if the pub had gone through some renovation that moved only the washroom up above (      ). He looked at me briefly, a man in his early thirties, but did not make any response whatsoever to my inquiry. Instead, he disappeared back into the interior and then, as if on cue, a young black woman appeared in front of me. She was all smiles, but not a single word came out of her rich, thick lips. At a loss, I just kept on drinking beer in silence.

  A while later, I went out the pub onto the patio like garden and sat on one of the chairs placed around a huge round wooden table for customers to enjoy themselves outside. A beer mug in my hand, I looked up at the varicolored evening sky, a faint glow in the west and the darkening east gathering clouds into the night.

  All of a sudden, there appeared a middle-aged man walking in a casual manner toward me. A total stranger, I gave a little start as the creature instinct will dictate in any human being. He began to speak to me in a mild tone of voice. He said something to the effect that there used to be the lavatory on the ground floor, but "change has taken place and now they have the thing on the first floor, don't they?" Taken by surprise, I didn't know how to answer except to say, "Oh, yes, it's been changed." He listened to me leisurely and turned around, vanishing into the thin night air. At that very moment, I was inadvertent enough not to grasp what had happened. Why on earth does a native white  man speak to a total stranger, yet more, a vagrant-looking guy obviously from the Orient. There must be some reason behind all of this. 

  Looking back, I belatedly realized that this middle-aged man must have shared the counter with me inside of the pub. He watched what was going on at the board. I don't know what this gentleman made of what happened between the counter. What I know for sure at the least is `Speaking and Spoken` should be something that needs a striking of balance to constitute the formula. He will have seen this balance broken at the bar and made up his mind to make good on what went off balance. 

  Before disappearing, he glanced back on me and I looked up at him. Fair enough. The night in Cornwall was drawing near over everyone. I stood to my feet and went on my way back home to my landlord's, very lighthearted. 

  Remarks : 

  The underlined are corrections for which I'm thankful to one of my former colleagues, R. Wlm. from Boston.

  2nd line - in the (added)

  8th line - moved (I used `brought`), (       ) an adverb I'd used  `there` was deleted.

  15th line - sky (I used the noun in plural - `skies`)

  17th line - a middle aged-man - changed from `a man in his mid-life`

  18th line - gave a little start - changed from `started a little`

  22nd line - listned to (I used `heard`)

  30th line - a striking of - changed from `striking` just as a present partciple

  Thanks a lot again `Wlm` for your help!