Apparently the Halloween party train on the Yamanote Line went off without a hitch:
This year’s story is rather interesting because of the crazy 2channeler element — check out the organizers’ assertion that the police showed up to protect the drunk foreigners from crazy organized otaku. Guess the latter get more scrutiny than the former these days.
These people make me sick.
Drunken public douchery, thankfully a small group this year. I found it sad that the trio of obnoxious people in the video decided to put anecdotal words into the mouth of the police and that quiet Japanese kid to use the Akihabara tragedy (fear the otaku!) to make them look ‘cool’.
I agree that these people are annoying as hell, although one should keep in mind that drunken public douchery is practically a national sport in Japan. Frankly, with trains running only a few minutes apart, you might as well wait for the next one if the first one is full of Darth Vaders and nurses.
Anyway, it seems like there’s still lots of disagreement as to whether this actually happened. I took a pretty long ride around the north side of the Yamanote around 9:30 PM on Halloween and didn’t notice a thing. There weren’t even any visible police in Shinjuku, which I thought to be pretty odd. I mainly went to the trouble of looking this up because my companion at the time was very curious about the lack of crazed foreigners in weird costumes.
That said, I would not be surprised if the police were more concerned about homicidal otaku than drunk gaijin.
“drunken public douchery is practically a national sport in Japan.”
But like all sports, it has a time and a place (under the cherry blossoms, for example). You can’t just play soccer in the middle of the Ginza, after all….
Why do many foreigners dislike this? Judging from the video, and perhaps my own reactions as someone who is very definitely *not* FOB, it’s because the train is filled with newly-arrived young idiots who don’t know smeg about the place, don’t speak the language worth a damn (“let’s go to Way-no!”), yet somehow have invaded ‘our’ territory: the once-exclusive enclave that took dedication and sincerity is now open to any fool. Minor exaggeration for dramatic purposes (we were plenty nuts when I was first here in the late ’80s, it’s just that no one else heard about it as there was no internet and cellphones were the size of a bus). Basically it’s the reaction of the old patriach lion when a new male arrives to try and take his harem. Only the new male is a total dickwad….
However it would be interesting to compare reactions to this with what you might generally call “Japan experience.” Most of the negative comments seem to come from people who know the place well – several years of residence, speak the language, etc. Are there any “old Japan hands” who think this is the coolest thing since Hikaru Genji first strapped on roller skates? Or is this as much as reaction against how foreigners are “supposed” to behave in Japan as anything else? Or is this simply a product of the internet age and the fact that the most fascinating subject for expats is other expats?
“check out the organizers’ assertion that the police showed up to protect the drunk foreigners from crazy organized otaku.”
That’s the standard line really: we need to restrict your freedoms to protect you. In this case, the cops were saying that they were to basically there to protect the HT people from the HT people, I think. I seriously suspect that despite all the talk about how creepy “2chan” is, not one of them could read a single 2chan post.
One thing I am very curious about is this “Haloween” thing is beginning to root in the society.
Here in Nagoya,I’ve notice a paper in our bulletin board few days ago saying there will be trick-or-treating in our apartment and we should be ready to greet them with candy.
As a non-expat, I’m curious about it too, but all I can gather from my online readings is that Halloween in Japan just means a few fratboys getting drunk on a train and yelling mangled Japanese and gossiping to make themselves look cool so they can blog about it later, forming a fresh stereotype to replace the drunken salaryman groper. 8′(
i dont really see the point in getting drunk. at the end of the night good times turn bad and you have the dreaded hangover the next day. i dont think its worth it.