Train man

Finally got out of the house while under a self imposed lock-in for several days due to financial constraint. Yes, it's a sad way of saying i'm broke.

If you haven't known by now when i mention going out, there's 2 out of 5 chance that i'll be heading to KLCC. Not to mention how easy it is for me to get there and one of the stores where i'll definately drop by is Kinokuniya.

While i'm not an avid reader, i do like to browsing through books. I somehow stumbled upon an interesting book titled 'Train Man' or 'Densha Otoko' in Japanese. It was originally written in Japanese and the book i was holding was translated to English.



Nevermind that, cause after reading the first page, the next thing i knew, i was over at the third chapter. This isn't your run-of-the-mill typical book so don't expect the words to come together or if grammatical mistakes makes you cough out blood, then by all means, drop the book. There are plenty of words that even i find doesn't make sense.

The reason why it's that way is due to the fact that it's in a messageboard style. In other words, it's not a written story. Just imagine visiting a messageboard and copying the whole thread into a book and walla ... you have 'train man'! At first glance, i wasn't impressed but after going through various comments and getting used to it, it slowly became addictive.

Here's how wikipedia elaborated on the story:

In 2004, an anonymous user posted in a 2channel thread for single men to bemoan their woes. According to his account, he had been sitting next to a young woman on the train when a drunken man entered the car and began bothering the other passengers, most of whom were female. When the drunk began to badger a particular woman, the poster took the risk of telling the man to stop bothering the passengers. The two struggled for a short time while the other passengers used this distraction to summon the conductor, who took control of the situation.

Never having done such a thing in his life, the poster was amazed to find the woman thanking him deeply for saving her from harassment. The young woman requested his address, telling him that she wanted to express her appreciation for his act, before they parted ways. The poster, upon returning home, shared his experience with other posters in the thread and was eventually nicknamed "Densha Otoko" (Train_Man).

I found myself almost bursting out laughing at times cause some things reminded me of how ridiculously similar their experiences were. Like how guys would always analyse everything a girl they're interested in says. Or should i say 'over-analyse'. Everything they say or do would lead them to a conclusion of whether the girl is interested in them or not.

Some messages were funny and there were a lot of ASCII character drawings. Those reminded me of my IRC junkie days. Indeed, the book makes you feel like you're reading a real thread online.

I'm seriously thinking of getting that book once i can afford it but it's so depressing that books are so expensively priced nowadays. I believe i bought the most books this year compared to previous. Not sure if that's a good thing though.