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Travelling on the train to and from work every day, I have to find ways to keep myself happy. I usually find myself reading the adverts posted up on the walls of the carriage and hanging from the ceiling. These last ones are particularly difficult for me to avoid as, standing at my 194cm., they hang down at the level of my face.

The adverts change with some regularity, so there is usually something new to look at. The other week I had an advert for ‘Flash’ magazine, with its pictures of women with their breasts half hanging out and headlines such as ‘Major Company OL Office Toilet Sex Confessions’ , flapping in front of my face.

Across from the ‘Flash’ ad, there has been an advert encouraging unemployed young people to seek ‘Short-Term, High Pay Jobs’ through a certain employment agency. The ad features a pic of a group of 4 slightly delinquent-looking young people who appear to be standing in a group aimlessly passing the time of day. Adverts like this, for part-time or temporary employment have increased quite dramatically over the last 2 or 3 months - reflecting no doubt the now-recognized socio-economic problem of companies failing to extend proper employment conditions to their workers.

A slight turn of the head and we get a barrage of consumer loan company ads - offering to solve people’s debt repayment problems by consolidating many small debts into one big debt, with painfully high interest rates. These are quite interesting because they just blatantly lie about their service - for example, at the top of the ad in big, bold lettering it will say ‘Your loan repayments will be reduced’, and at the bottom in small letters it says ‘Your loan repayments may not in fact decrease and such is in no way guaranteed’.

When I went to Osaka, I was amused and slightly surprised by the posters up on the train doors warning people that ‘Groping is a Crime’ - maybe Nagoya doesn’t have the same problems with perverted men unable to overcome their urge to touch up high school girls or to take pictures up their skirts with their mobile phones…

Sex (nothing wrong with that, of course, but in full public view on the train?), unfair employment practices, and bare-faced lies (it doesn’t make it any better when you admit, even immediately, that ‘this is a lie’) from dodgy credit companies - a snapshot of Japanese society from inside a train carriage.