Shifty Eyes

please do. I stole the term myself from the japanlife subreddit.

The most dangerous part of living in Tokyo isn’t the typhoons, earthquakes, or tsunamis these days, its the mothers on electric assist e-bikes ‘mama-chari’ mid-afternoon on their way back with the whole family.

Toddler in the front, middle schooler on the back, she has pedal assist and is booking it on the sidewalk while looking at her smartphone because its legally permissible to ride with the pedestrians when you feel unsafe on the streets. The bike lanes here aren’t separated from traffic. And the bike lanes here are de-facto 15-minute loading parking spaces for the massive trucks, drop off points for taxis, and uber eats scooter parking spots. So you either have to merge into traffic due to all the parked vehicles, or ride on the sidewalk.

If you ever come to Toyko, walk on the left and look over your right shoulder so you don’t get run over by a whole family on a modern day chariot.

Yup, everybody looking down at their pocket computers and fucking up their posture.

Tokyo is full of meanderthals walking and biking while looking down at their phones. Standing still while waiting for the lights to change is tame.

There’s even a word for it here: aruki-sumaho

Notable sightings so far in 2025:

• A pack of middle school boys all playing a mobile game while walking with their faces in their phones and blocking the sidewalk. Three abreast in marching band formation, maybe 15 of them.

• Salaryman holding a laptop and on a conference call while rushing towards a train station.

• A few face-in-tablet while walking, that always gets a smirk out of me.

• Lady in heels, approaching the upward stairs while watching a video on her phone in landscape mode, arm fully extended and airpods in. Misses a step and eats it, goes full scorpion. I was impressed she managed to hold onto her phone and keep all her teeth, she just missed chomping on a concrete step by a few cm.

Its extremely common here. Enough that I usually have to stop walking on the sidewalk and just wait for them to notice me to look up and move out of the way, you can’t always side step them because they’re frequently not walking straight and they’ll wander across the path anyway, hence the term meanderthals.

(Edited for grammar/spelling/links)