All my friends on the way to the train

As a salaryman, I obviously take a crowded subway to and from my main habitat; the office where I have my small salaryman desk and chair in the office landscape. To walk to my station from my apartment takes around 10 minutes with a comfortable pace and the path I walk is not that heavily trafficked which means that I basically know the faces of the people I will meet on my trek. Since I know nothing of these people they get their own nicknames subconsciously in my head. A few of the people I meet are “White Blouse girl” who, obviously, always wear a white blouse and otherwise look pretty bland, “Angry Lady” who always looks angry and walks very fast, “Dumpy Suit Guy” is a sad looking old Salaryman with a dumpy suit and way too big glasses, then there’s also “Heavy Make-Up Girl”, “Freaky Old Guy”, “Looks-like-crackhead creepy old Lady” among my rouges gallery I encounter on my way to the station.

Because these characters are part of my overall morning routine, I rely more on them than I do on my watch regarding the timing to my train. If I happen to meet one of them earlier than usually; I automatically assume that I am early, if I meet them later; I assume that I am a bit late and pick up the pace. For some reason I never assume that they would happen to be late or early…

Where I lived earlier, there was this train I always waited for and the biggest check-point for me to know whether I was early or late was “Obese Duck Girl” (who, I’m sure is a really nice person, but she was slightly obese and her mouth for some reason reminded me of a duck and she often wore yellow clothes) who rode in the same train cart on the train before the one I wanted to take. So I always waited at the station home until she had passed with her train, it was actually very convenient. I remember once, during a weekend as I was walking through Shinjuku station (which is not my commuting station) and among the crowds, for a few seconds ended up face to face with Obese Duck Girl by complete chance, we both looked each other in the eyes for a brief moment and I think we both were about to greet each other until we realized that we actually didn’t know each other at all and it would be strange to say hello. The subway is interesting indeed...