How long does it take you to realize--in your half-awake half-asleep head-nodding-down-to-your-chest commuting home confusion--that you are staring at someone's ass?

I only noticed it for the first time last week.

But it's something I--all of us--have been doing, well, probably since we started riding trains; I just never realized it before.

It's not any perverted thing, or vouyeristic fetish. Men and women alike are subject to the gaze, and not just rear-ends either, but front-sides too, unfortunately.

The seats on the train are to blame, placing seated passengers at eye level with, well, typically their neighbors crotch.

You don't stare.

You sleep, or doze, or stare out the window, or put your eyes anywhere but the soiled behind of a salary man. But on those crowded, 11:30 p.m. trains where there is no window to look out, no advertisement not blocked by a suit; sometimes on those trains, you wake up out of that blank stare and realize that, "Wow, the focus of my glassy-eyed daydreaming gaze was that mans ass."

And then... well, where the hell do you put your eyes? You say...

And then close them and go to sleep...

And you wake up somewhere, maybe Roppongi, always unexpectedly.

You're at McDonald's waiting for that subway to open up because, well, tonight was one of those nights you shouldn't have gone clubbing but did becaue, well, it's Tokyo and what were you going to do anyway, SLEEP?

So you're at McDonald's, 3rd floor, eating a large fry and repeating lullabyes to yourself trying to pass the time.

And though that McDonald's is a paradise for exhausted clubbers, there are others who use it's glossy tables and smoky rooms as a hangout.

Like Hiroyuki, the Ph.D student in nanotechnology from Tokyo University who I met there.

He was studying English.

I was recovering from two Kamikaze's.

I asked him everything.

But he couldn't really explain just exactly what he was doing at 3 a.m. in Roppongi on a Friday night. Studying, I know... but? A Ph.D student in nanotechnology from Japan's equivalent of Harvard University, using--of all places--Roppongi as his hangout?

Wouldn't Ochanomizu be more, well, typical? Maybe more relaxed? Safer, at least?

"Yes, but... I want to be around English, so I come here."

I told him I nanotechnology was a frighteningly futuristic technology, wished him luck, and headed for the first train home, where I sat down and rested my behind on the lovely cloth seats, and then rested my eyes on some lovely behind.

And speaking of private parts:

"How long? Your penis?" I was asked, yesterday.

I didn't answer but instead solemnly shook the hand of the boy who asked the question, produced a disposable camera, and with my arm over his shoulder had my picture taken with this 13-year-old potty-mouth.

He probably was a bit like the 13-year-old me, maybe.

At least he was making a solid effort at English, though I don't know if I can call it conversational, it will certainly get people to laugh, and laughter is some kind of communication, right?

Junior high boys are the best.

If you talk to them long enough, they will ask you anything.

"First sex? When? When?"

I love my students.

I think I sat around at school until almost 7 p.m. last night, just talking to them, being with them, staring out an open 4th story window toward Tokyo, just talking, talking...

Soon they'll be gone.

The boy who brings his guitar to school everyday and plays Nirvana and Metallica...

The girl who giggles everytime I tell her I'm going home soon...

The boy who never let's me try on his glasses...

The girl who's name is the same sound as the word sugar...

Soon they'll be gone.