I wasn't expecting that.
Despite the prevalent image of Japan being a squeaky clean utopia of clean-shaven, impeccably-dressed men and women marching in neat rows and columns to and from their office jobs at the space robot construction companies every day, in all metropolitan areas you will inevitably see the shanty towns of cardboard and blue tarpaulin. Go to any train station and you'll see human beings slumped in doorways and alcoves, most unconscious due to the usual forms of chemical enhancement. Some are sitting cross-legged on the ground moaning at no one in particular. These are the homeless that are easy to spot.

However, there are a few that you never suspect of being those whom have fallen through the cracks, until it is far too late.

A few years back I was standing outside Shibuya Station -- one of the busiest, hysterically crowded mass-transit facilities in the entire solar system -- on a Tuesday morning in full businessman suited regalia, briefcase in hand, waiting for a coworker to show up before heading to a meeting with a client. I'm standing there amongst an endless sea of flowing humanity, in and out of the station and across the intersection opposite the front gates. Off to the side was a little waiting area with a fountain where you might expect a multitude of pigeons and various homeless people to congregate.

Presently I saw a middle-aged lady sitting on the marble facade of the fountain, calmly reading a tabloid newspaper. Her clothing, while weathered, didn't scream "tramp!" at me, and neither did her demeanor. She wasn't wobbly drunk, nor was she having animated conversations with alien beings from the planet Zoombak. She was just sitting there, reading a paper. There were no other people in the immediate vicinity. Just this one lady and her paper.

And then, as I was looking in her general direction, she looked up from her paper, and leaned a bit over to one side as if to peer at something on the ground.

At which point, without any warning, without any pre-heave, without any signal whatsoever, she proceeded to explode forth with the longest, most horribly sickening Mr. Creosote-style projectile vomit I have ever seen. Making a noise that sounded very much like RAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGH, she managed to achieve a spew distance reaching nearly five feet.

Keep in mind that throughout all this, there are hundreds and hundreds of people behind me walking to and fro, minding their own business, no one stopping or even looking in the direction of Mt. Vesuvius over there on the water fountain. It was just her, and me. A decidedly odd personal moment between us.

When she finished her nuclear vomitocaust, she slowly sat back upright again, and turned to the next page of her newspaper. Nobody acted as if anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

To this day I wonder if she was even a homeless person at all.
(The 2-Belo OH SHI--[Sound of impact][End of recording], Tue 7 Jul 2009, 8:19, Reply)