I’ve always maintained that if you want to learn everything there is to know about a country you need to view its dirty videos. In Japan, though, what you learn isn’t always that good, especially when you see them filmed while riding the train.

Soon after I moved to Tokyo, I was riding the train back to my apartment in Eastern Tokyo. I was sitting at the front of the second car, which gave me a window into the first car. While I was sitting there minding my own business, I saw a camera flash from the first car.  When I glanced over, I saw a couple men groping a woman right near the window.

I went into “get ready to call the police mode”, and then I saw a second flash and the video camera. Eventually the scene got a little more revealing and involved cellphone antennas and the woman pretending to fight back. A lot of Japanese dirty movies (ahem, so I’ve heard) involve groping and rape and domination. Seeing it on the train was especially disturbing.

Eventually they stopped, which meant they were probably getting ready to get out a station and film the next part.

Another time, many years later, I happened to look down the train car and saw a scene pretty much straight out of Seinfeld: a woman wearing a bra as a top. This itself wasn’t particularly disturbing, it was the fact she was dressed as a school girl. She and her entourage got out the train almost as soon as I noticed so I never saw exactly what was going on, but I’m guessing a camera was involved.

Now, however, such scenes are illegal as a few years ago Japan passed a law banning public displays of, um, simulated affection and public nudity. A model and her photographer got in trouble soon after the law was passed for shooting a photo book on the streets late at night when no one was around. The photo book itself was evidence of the crime.

This is all probably for the best, but I can’t help but think that somewhere in Japan there is a photo of me on the cover of a dirty movie. I’ve probably got a “what the hell is this” look on my face.