Japan: It's enough to drive a man insane

Coming back from a business trip to Nagoya recently, I pulled out my Mac to do a bit of work. The Shinkansen was quite crowded though it was, as ever, quiet as a mouse as people got on with reading their papers, eating their bentos or snoozing. Then I realised that every 30 seconds or so there was this short, slightly mechanical squawk then silence again. I looked round and noticed nothing, including no other person who seemed to be annoyed or aware of the noise. After ten more squawks I had pinned it down to a schoolgirl - one row back on the other side of the train - who was using her mobile phone to take pictures of herself - endlessly. There she was, grinning, grimacing and pouting into the phone and hitting the squawk button before frowning at the result. My patience was wearing thin as I could do little work under conditions such as these, but she thankfully got up and went walkabout. Ten minutes later she was back, then another noise - more like a screech than a squawk was emanating from her. It appeared that she was now deleting most of the hundreds of photos she'd taken of herself earlier, with the same grimace, the same pout. She got off the train in Shinagawa, one stop before Tokyo station, oblivious of my seething rage, and my bewilderment at how nobody else seemed at all irritated at the noise she'd been making, nor worried that a 15-year-old could be so totally and utterly self obsessed. As she walked off, I pictured her falling down the long staircase, phone up to her face, oblivious of the ground rushing toward her.