When Things Go Off the Rails
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We left Osaka yesterday and are now in a smallish historic town called Kanazawa.
When Things Go Off the Rails
I spent our two weeks in Osaka in recovery mode—eating, wandering, people-watching, and not much else. As a result, I was feeling kind of stressed that I didn’t really have anything to write about for today’s essay.
Then yesterday morning, we headed for the station to hop on a bullet train.
Chaos ensued.
Now, that is not what is supposed to happen. Japan’s trains are famously efficient and punctual, and fast.
But we stood on the platform waiting for the Thunderbird 17, and became increasingly confused as 10:45 came and went, and the crowd grew, but nothing happened. The digital signs stopped making sense—the 9:45 was ‘suspended’ and the Thunderbird 19 was ‘delayed,’ but number 17–ours—disappeared altogether.
Eventually we found a British couple who seemed as perplexed as we were. She finally found a QR code to scan, and we figured out that a train (ours?) had ‘collided with a passenger.’
We went back into the station to try and sort things out at the ticket office; Lee took a number, but there were nearly a hundred people in line ahead of us. It was chaos.
So we kept looking for officials and asking questions, and finally decided to just go back to the platform and wait. Theoretically, your ticket is good for the day; if you miss your designated train, you can (maybe?) hop on the next one and you’ll just give up your reserved seat. We were willing to gamble.
We got on a train, sat in our original seats (which involved a young couple volunteering to move, and an older woman refusing to move—the ripple effect of delayed trains ripples and ripples), and rode to the next stop. At that point, a man in a suit took our seats, telling us to get off and wait for the next train. So we did.
When the next train arrived (by this time we had given up on keeping track of the numbers—they were all Thunderbird, and they were all out of order), we got on fully prepared to stand in the passage between cars for the whole hour-long ride.
But I could see two empty seats in the front row of the 4th car, so when the train started moving, we snagged them.
After about half an hour, the conductor entered, and stopped to tell us that we were in women-only seats. Lee moved. It turned out he had a better window, so I moved too. It was all beginning to feel like we were stowaways playing musical chairs.
At least the conductor bowed when he entered the car. That was fun.
Then we got to the station where we were originally meant to change trains, and lined up at the office to get our tickets exchanged for actual legitimate ones with reserved seats.
By this time we had 12 little ticket papers (all printed in Japanese, obviously) and inadvertently fed the wrong ones into the ticket machine. Lee apparently shoved his way through the barrier, but I raised my hand, an attendant came, sorted my ridiculous ticket mess, and let me through. We are both helpless and hapless.
The train we wound up on was not, unfortunately, the express that we had originally booked. So the 2nd leg took over an hour, instead of 35 minutes, and left at 2 instead of 12:30.
We had planned on eating lunch in Kanazawa, which is what we ultimately did, but it wasn’t until 4 pm, instead of the very civilized 1:30 I had been anticipating.
I could’ve been cranky about it all—being hungry has that effect—but at some point in the chaos, I heard the (English) words ‘fatal accident’ on the PA system, and being cranky just seemed churlish and self-centered.
I hope the driver of whichever train was involved (Thunderbird 17, we suspect) gets counseling.
Having a late lunch seems pretty inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things.
Take care,
Lisa
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