Park people: Everyone's a friend at midnight

Some people have instant sex appeal, a come-to bed-with-me-now face, well, me, I have a come, talk-to-me-now face. I may be standing in Boots the chemists, for example, browsing through the toothbrush selection, wondering whether I am a medium bristle or a soft bristle type of a person, when the next thing I know, a woman has sidled up besides me, fingering and stroking the face flannels lovingly, whilst telling me all about her ectopic pregnancy, or perhaps about her husband's erectile problems: "He's just too tired; he works such long hours, but what about me," she bleats. "I have needs too." I smile and nod encouragingly, and the flow of woe continues.

These chemist confessionals stopped when I arrived in Japan: the language barrier is too great. But still people want to talk. Here, I'm a magnet for homeless men.

On Saturday in Ueno Park as I sat down on a bit of wall unblemished by pigeon shit, with the intention of eating my lunch, a resident of the park came over to talk.

"Which country?" He demanded as he sat down beside me, slipping his feet out of his brown plastic flip-flops. My eyes glazed over, the same old question.

"England," I said, wearily, staring at his yellowed hands, wondering if he had a touch of jaundice, or perhaps, in his life before homelessness, he had been a heavy smoker.

Expecting the conversation to flounder after one more question, I was very surprised by the man's next comment.

"Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth the First: why were these two ladies constantly fighting?" He asked. I looked at him, grey woolly hat peeking out beneath a once white sunhat. I noticed the two wiry grey chest hairs poking out of the v-necked t-shirt pulled tightly over his ample stomach, and I realised that my grasp on British History was not quite what it should be. I mumbled something about Protestants and Catholics, but, then giving up, I said, "They were power crazy; it's the way of western women -- remember Margaret Thatcher and her handbag, known by all as the iron lady."

"You westerners are much stronger than us Japanese; you are always yelling and shouting..." Then he paused, scratched at the mosquito bites on his left calf and said: "Books tell me that Queen Victoria was a very, very short lady. How did the British Empire become so powerful, with this little lady in charge?"

A great big dollop of pigeon shit landed at my feet. I had no satisfactory answer. I looked up; the tree was full of pigeons; I was a sitting target, waiting to be shat upon.

I decided to seize control of the conversation as is the way of forceful western women.

"Do you live here?" I asked.

"Yes."

"So how many people live in the park?" I asked. He looked around.

"About a thousand," he said.

"I don't see any women." All I could see were men, sitting, sleeping, cutting their toenails, living their lives.

"Sometimes there are women," he said. "But women have more options than men." I assumed he meant prostitution.

"How do you make money?" I asked.

"You know coca cola cans...? I collect them and press them. I can sell one kilo of pressed cans for 90 yen. I make perhaps 3000 yen* a day."

(*15 GB pounds.)

"Well, that's not bad, I mean, it's not as though you have many overheads, living here," I said, pointing at the blue plastic tents and shacks just visible through the trees.

"No, no rent, no need to buy food... In the morning western volunteers give us food, then the Salvation Army come at 1 pm and give us a hot meal, and, in the winter, Korean Christians come in a big truck, distributing blankets and clothes. Korean Christians are very powerful."

"So just alcohol then... What do you do in winter?" I asked.

"We stay here all year round. It's not cold like London." It is a common fallacy amongst the Japanese that London is a ferociously cold place; I used to try and correct them, but now I let it pass. "It never goes below zero here, even at midnight..." He looked wistful. "Everyone's a friend at midnight."

"Splat," another sloppy blob of pigeon excrement landed. I excused myself and left.