After everyone disembarked from the Halloween Weekend Loop Line Party, the JR crowd control staff gathered around this guy who was out cold on the platform and did... well they really didn't do much of anything. They tried shaking him awake and prodded him like a piece of cold mutton, but then gave up and took a few minutes to ponder as a group the following questions:
Why the hell did I get chosen to work on this stinking weekend? Why the hell did all of those stupid foreigners choose to get together and act so stupidly on the train? Did they really think that dressing up in costumes, scaring the natives, drinking in public, switching cars in a mad dash whenever arriving at a new station and just acting like fools in general made for a good time? Should I be more concerned about that warm liquid that soaked through my pants when I was pressed up against that big flabby gaijin man dressed in the nursery school boy outfit (he's in the background of the picture, BTW)?
Apparently, the answer to the second to last question is yes because they come back year after year. It was amusing to see, but it wasn't really any different from a typical weekend in Isla Vista back at UCSB, except for being in Japan on a train. If you want to see Japanese have a mix of apathetic resignation, utter fear, morbid curiosity, or acquired distaste of groups of gaijin in general, then all you need to do is to attend this annual anti-matsuri and you will see. Or you will drink too much and hear from your friends (and other random people that you bump into) about how much of an ass you made of yourself (again, it's the same as any given night in IV).
We didn't stay long enough to see what became of the non-costumed dude on the ground (maybe he was just an unrelated bystander who happened to pass out on the platform), but I bet he was pretty confused when he woke up to the sight of ten JR employees looking down at him. And if he was lucid, perhaps he noticed that the looks on their faces were more of contempt and irritation rather than genuine concern.
Dude, it was awesome being on that platform with all those people in full-out costumes....until we were crammed into the train cars worse than during rush hour. That wasn't cool....
I think ya'll have it all wrong. That is his costume. He's a passed out salary-man. What was your costume sonic and where's a pic?
Yo, here are some pix from Halloween:
http://mishark.blogspot.com/2005/10/halloween-in-osaka.html