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Heading to the Forest Research Institute
It was the morning of the second day.
Last night, I ate a confectioner’s bread I bought at a convenience store that cost about 100 yen for two.
Hmmm. It tastes bad for health.
I prepared quickly and headed to Kepon, where the Forest Research Institute is located.
Kepong can be reached by train from Imbi station via KL Central station.
First, buy a token to get to KL Central Station.
Huh? Did they raise the price?
Yesterday it was 1.5 ringgit and now it’s 3.1 ringgit.
It was probably an Independence Day holiday price kind of thing. (I’m not sure what the truth is.)
Well, it’s cheap.
I looked for a train to Kepong at Kl Central Station.
Batu cave was easy to understand because the stop was the end of the station, but
Kepon wasn’t, so we didn’t know where to take the ride.
After checking the route map and timetable, I went to the platform.
Hmm?
I’ll have to wait an hour for the train, won’t I?
I’m impatient.
For the time being, I wanted to get a little closer to Kepon.
To get to the station where the line that goes through Kepong and the line that doesn’t go through Kepong diverge, I took a suitable train.
I decided to wait patiently at the branch station.
I sit on the home bench and wait.
I don’t mess around with my smartphone because I’m worried about the amount of traffic. I didn’t even bring my spare time tools with me.
I just wait in a daze.
As I looked at the people at the station, most of them were fiddling with their smartphones.
Looking at the road beyond the station, there were cars buzzing by and not many people on bikes.
It was a moment when I realized that Malaysia is a wealthy country.
women-only carriage
Finally, the train came.
Hmm?
It is a women-only carriage.
I rode it normally.
I had a feeling that some men were taking the train to avoid the women-only carriages, so I looked around.
What the hell?
There’s usually men sitting there, too.
The women riding in the women-only carriages don’t seem particularly bothered either.
Well, if they say something, I’ll just go away, I guess.
I decided to sit down too.
But what about Japan’s women-only trains?
What would Japanese women do if a male foreign tourist were to get on a Japanese women-only train?
Essentially, there is nothing legally binding about a women-only vehicle in Japan.
There is no such thing as a mere consideration that men are not allowed to ride.
If you say no, then you are violating the rights of men.
If you built a women’s carriage just because a man was molesting you.
I want them to build a men-only car.
It’s the molester’s fault, but hasn’t it become too much of a violation of men’s rights?
I thought to myself.
The problem is that Japanese men have a kind of disdain for women for a long time, and not just for their rights.
It’s easy to see from the videos and Kabukicho and other places that abound on the street.
And there are many men who don’t even realize that various things have become misogynistic. (I probably do, too.)
The words we unknowingly use are “you’re a woman,” “get married early,” and “girl power.
What if it was the other way around? Like…
There’s a lot of catchphrases like “no men allowed in certain places” and “smells like a man.
It’s only natural that we Japanese men are too indifferent to women’s rights to be like that.
The problem with molestation is that men are indifferent and do not try to understand the feelings of women who have been molested.
A woman close to me once told me about a molestation case, and she was honestly quite scared.
And I was genuinely angry at the molester who did such a thing.
There are a lot more molesters who cry themselves to sleep than I imagined, and this woman said she couldn’t talk to anyone, including her parents.
If men don’t care about molestation, molestation will never go away.
It’s not that Japanese men are getting weaker, or that the number of herbivorous men is increasing.
It’s just that the number of men who watch videos on their smartphones and are indifferent to society has increased.
(I have much regret.)
I’m not sure what the sense of gender equality is like in Malaysia.
Or at least that’s what it feels like to be in a Malaysian women-only carriage.
While I was thinking about what to do, I arrived at Kepong station.
To be continued…
