My Battlefield
It is 7:15 am. As is the case every time, the rush hour traffic is unbearably congested.
The only way you’re going to be comfortable for the approximately 30 minutes it takes to get to the office is if I can sit down.
I tried staggered work around 6:00 a.m., but it didn’t last long, and before I knew it, I was waiting for the 7:15 a.m. train.
“It’s not that I run away because I’m in pain. It’s the running that makes you suffer.”
As the psychologist William James said, this is the time of the day for me, a useless person who is weak in the morning.
It is outrageous for me to avoid the rush hour and get up early.
Targets on the train
Mr. Sota Fujii, who is the talk of the town at the professional go player’s association, is said to play Shogi by reading 30 or more moves ahead.
This is an impossible feat for me as I forget what I ate yesterday.
I wonder if it is possible to increase the winning rate to secure a seat on the train by at least reading two or three moves ahead.
It is said that the way to improve at Shogi is to move pieces according to the game record and learn the moves of the strong players.
If that is true, then if I can play shogi with passengers and memorize the moves that make seats available at each passing station, I can win the title game of the Commuter Rush Cup.
There are nine stations from the nearest boarding station to the nearest alighting station.
If one station is one inning of a baseball game, a hard-throwing pitcher who can complete the entire journey from station 1 to station 9 is a passenger who must be avoided at all costs.
However, it is difficult to remember the faces of passengers on a 10-car train with no fixed place to board.
A beautiful woman like Keiko Kitagawa would be easy to memorize at a glance, but I am not very good at remembering the faces of people I have never met before.
“Is there a more obvious target?“
There must be some users whom I encounter with high probability on our commute to work and who are easy to recognize.
The common denominator in the Venn diagram would be students wearing school uniforms.
By tracing their uniforms to their schools, it would be much easier than trying to remember their faces, as well as identifying where they get off at.
I tried several times, but it was difficult to move in front of the target in the crowded car, and the other seat hyenas probably had the same idea as mine, so even if I could get close, they would not leave the front of the target.
Also, if I happen to wait for a seat in front of a student I recognize, I could be charged with stalking.
It’s just weird to imagine a middle-aged man coming up to you from a distance, waiting for you to come to him.
If I continues to do so two or three times, I could be mistaken for a criminal.
What we can learn from observation
“I’m not a genius because I can explain how I can hit.”
These are the words of Ichiro, who played for the Mariners. He teaches us the importance of making an effort to think.
Like dominating the ever-changing board of a Japanese chess game, shouldn’t we be able to get an unoccupied seat by keeping an eye on the fluid movements of passengers and responding flexibly?
Such a cheap approach of setting targets in advance, no matter how much you want to sit down, is not elegant as a respectable adult.
This is the kind of thing that will not get you a stellar reception from the prestigious Eden School matron, Henry Henderson.
Just as Mr. Ichiro focused his concentration while thrusting his bat horizontally toward the pitcher as he entered the batter’s box, let’s take a closer look at our surroundings while exhaling slowly as we board the train.
There are a variety of behaviors in the train, such as sleeping, operating a smartphone, reading, listening to music, and so on.
From among these people, we must find those who get up from their seats at the earliest possible moment.
The standing movement in front of the seat should be one seat on each side as own rule.
When commuting to work, “I can ride over!” There is no yutori generation in Japan that replies.
If you see someone saying such a leisurely thing, please let them off the hook because they are a restructured person who hides the fact that they work in a mysterious country.
In other words, even if you keep standing in front of someone who is distracted by the train station, it is unlikely that you will be able to sit down.
Now then, “Who will be getting off shortly?”
From my two months of 2024 seat occupant observation statistics, I have noticed that the moment a departing train approaches the next station is the most critical.
In short, we can lock on to those who change their gaze as the next station approaches, whether they open their eyes and look at the window if they are sleeping, or remove their eyes from the screen or book if they are operating a smartphone or reading, etc.
“I want to make the most of my time in the office.” Don’t worry if you are selfish like that.
You can listen to your favorite music, read a book, or check the news on your smartphone.
All you have to do is to catch the change of gaze of the people sitting in the three seats in front of you, using your all-consuming breath, just at the moment when the company announcement is made.
According to W. Clement Stone, the starting point for all greatness is clarity of purpose.
Slime and Kirby
I passed four stations from boarding the train.
“I want to sit through six innings between the starting pitcher and the relay pitcher’s start.” I observe the office workers in front of me as I think.
A young man of today operating a smartphone while wearing headphones.
If I were to compare this to the classic game “Dracula” by Square Enix, I would say that this is the type of passenger I encounter about as often as a slime.
When the announcement for the fifth station came on, he looked at the slime sitting in front of him and removed his headphones from his ears.
‘Is he getting into a position to listen to the announcements so he dosen’t miss the train?’ I thought.
I was prepared to move immediately, but he was still engrossed in his phone screen and showed no sign of getting up.
Apparently, he just wanted to stop the music and focus on his phone.
I was a little annoyed at the headphones around his neck like a DJ, but waited for the next opportunity.
The elderly woman sitting on the left side of the slime has not moved since the first station, perhaps deep in sleep. She seems to be just a corpse.
The woman on the right, dressed in bright pink, out of place for the morning commute, is reading a paperback book, a rarity these days.
The situation suddenly changes when an announcement is made before the arrival of the sixth station.
DJ-Slime takes his eyes off his phone and looks out the window to check the view.
The pink Kirby (a Nintendo game character) sitting on the right side of the train also puts his book away in his bag.
“Now you can get a shot at either seat!”
I was getting a little tired as I reached the halfway point of the battle for seats today. I need an innkeeper to help me recover before work.
“I need to reassess the situation and think it through!” I shuddered to myself and recalled DJ-Slime’s actions.
He is such a careful man that he takes off his headphones two stops before, and one stop before, he scurries out of the car window to check the view outside.
“This is definitely the place!“
I should not be provoked by Kirby, who has put away her books, and we should stand firm. What I don’t move is as good as a mountain.
The train arrived at the station, and I took a half step back to make it easier for DJ Slime to get off.
As expected, Kirby got up and left his seat. Fortunately, the person standing beside me also got off, so I was able to sit down if I shifted a step.
However, it was the worst possible behavior for a gentleman to block the path of DJ-Slime and go for my seat first.
“Come on, there’s plenty of room in front of me. Feel free to get off!” While I was thinking about this, Kirby’s seat was taken by a lady who came to take it with ninja-like movements.
I was furiously angry at the DJ-slime sitting in front of me, but it was already too late.
I thought he was the weakest slime in Dracula, but he was an excellent Draft 1 Pitcher who could still pitch beyond the middle of the lineup.
The announcement for the seventh station came on.
As I look ahead, I realize that the Dora 1-Slime is again looking up and checking the view from the window, like a pitcher who is concerned about stealing a base.
He looks as alert as if Yuukyo Shuto, who has a quick foot of 5.7 seconds at 50 meters, is on the basepath.
At the fifth station, he takes off his headphones and starts listening to the internal announcements without missing a beat.
He also visually checks the scenery from the 6th station, one stop before his alighting station, and checks again at the 7th station.
“I’m almost there, but it would be nice to be able to sit down for at least two more stops. Next time, please!” I took a half step back and waited, but he didn’t get up again.
I was too occupied to suppress my desire to punch him.
Maybe it was a habit of his to check the view from the window, maybe there was no point in doing so.
I’m really tired today. “I’ll have a sweet canned coffee later.” As I was dawdling, at the eighth stop, the inner man suddenly gets up from his seat.
I was not stepping back half a step in a gentleman’s style, so I moved in a hurry when my knee hit him a little.
“Oh, come on. You’re gonna have to go the whole nine innings today…“
