I need to be honest.   Amidst the dazzling glass and steel buildings of Tokyo there lurks a shadowy societal substructure.  Last evening during a subway ride I briefly witnessed a scene that reminded me of this evil dark side.  As a teacher, perhaps I have a heightened sensitivity to what's going on with people around me for the movement of a particular passenger snapped me to attention.  This is what I observed...

 On Japanese subways seated passengers ride on long benches facing the center aisle.  I had just taken a seat when a stocky young man with a notably un-Japanese physique wearing a backwards baseball cap, baggy jeans and tennis shoes, quickly approached a woman seated diagonally across from me.  He brusquely and silently handed her a hand-written note, then kept walking.  She quickly scanned it, grimaced slightly, and tucked it into a transparent envelope.  Nervously she put the envelope into her purse yet pulled it out numerous times to read it again through the plastic.  In my judgement, she was not older than 15 years.

Having lived for some time in a Chicago apartment building from which prostitutes plied their nightly business, I am fairly familiar with "the look."  And she certainly had it.  As she huddled on the corner seat,  she became aware that I was carefully observing her.  She did not look entirely Japanese but appeared to be trying to look so.  Under her bangs she wore thick, fake eyelashes.  She also wore thin baby-doll pajama shorts, over-the-knee black stockings, flimsy high-healed shoes, and a leopard-print jacket.  Clearly she was beginning her night's work.  I wanted to lean forward and whisper to her, "Come with me."  I am angry with every individual who supports and condones this abuse of young women-- and societies that looks the other way.  I recognize that these operations also exist in my hometown.  It is all evil.  Just evil.