Electric Pig

A little girl was sitting next to me on the train home from work yesterday. She can’t have been more than 8 years old. She was wearing very strong prescription sunglasses with a bright blue tint that made her eyes look huge; and a protective hat, like those worn by American Football players in WW2 newsreels. The hat had circular holes in it, and a few that someone had lovingly modified to make look like Mickey Mouse’s silhouette. Her mother spoke to her constantly, her voice betraying her worry, and her hands clutched a large yellow folder – the type they give you at hospitals to hold x-rays. In my foreigner-in-Tokyo-self-obsessiveness, I thought that the little girl was staring at me, until her mother asked her to try to sit up straight and she replied “It hurts”. Her mother told her she would buy her a nice parfait when it had finished. The little girl, looked even sadder and said, like it was an apology, that she couldn’t eat after. Hand-in-hand, they got off the train at Takadanobaba Station. Stopping a little way up the platform in the sea of commuters shoving past, the little girl asked her mother something. She agreed and they stood and waited, facing the train. As the train pulled out of the station, the businessmen and shoppers, engrossed in their comics and mobile phones were too busy to notice a little girl waving at them. No one waved back.