Teenage boys are the same everywhere. Stupid and convinced of their invulnerability. I was waiting at Mukougaokayuen station this morning, connecting between the stopping and express services to Shinjuku. I was listening to a Japanesepod101.com language lesson. An express train coming in the opposite direction (one which stops at Mukougaokayuen started blaring its horn. They usually do this because someone is standing too close to the edge of the platform. This one kept sounding, though and stopped only a third of the way into the station. As I looked down the platform to see what the problem was, I spotted a young lad (13, maybe) climbing off the tracks and onto the platform I was standing on. Train company staff started rushing around with mobiles or radios (difficult to tell the difference sometimes these days. There were a lot of similar age boys on the opposite platform, but I couldn’t tell from their attitude whether the boy had been pushed onto the tracks or jumped down on his own “initiative”. They stopped a long distance express (not stopping here) just outside the station on my side, and left the express in the other direction standing part way into the station for about three minutes. I don’t know if they found the boy, but things returned to normal.

Whether it was horseplay that got out of hand, a stunt, or a serious piece of bullying, I’m not sure. It didn’t look like a suicide attempt. Whichever it was, it would appear that there are some cultural universals, and one of those would appear to be silly actions by teenage boys.