Off the rails

This should have been in the training manual: get a good night’s sleep. This is the kind of job where failure do so results in a day filled with wishes for death, whereas compliance leads to a day of joy and sparkles. Am I exaggerating? You decide!

There are no insects here. OK, that’s not strictly true…I think I saw one yesterday. Come on, this is spring! There should be squillions of insects! But no…not even in the apartment’s nooks and crannies. What’s going on?

In other news, I saw the sky today. As in blue sky. Normally the sky is white and the sunlight is just this diffuse glare that is everywhere at once, reflecting off every surface and making it basically impossible to keep your eyes open. There was a high wind, so I guess all the air pollution got blown away.

---

My first real panic was not long in coming. I’d been really proud of the way I’d negotiated the Tokyo transport network: Narita to Shinjuku; found the Nova office in Shinjuku; Shinjuku to Tokyo (even if it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to buy a train ticket). Tokyo, however, required me to catch the Shinkansen.

The Shinkansen will totally kick your ass. The literal translation is “New Trunk Line,” which is rather startlingly unpoetic, but from the moment you glimpse its icon in the train station, you are left in no doubt as to its nature. While buses and regular trains have somewhat pedestrian (haw haw!) icons, the Shinkansen one looks like a spaceship. It’s a circular front-on view that says “I mean business.” Long before you see the train, you know it’s coming; there’s a rush of displaced air that howls through the tunnel. Finally the beast arrives, slamming in to the station at 80 km/h, and what do you know, it even looks like a spaceship. You could go to Mars in one of these things.

Shinkansen trains have the punctuality of the Grim Reaper itself. Two minutes before time, BAM, it arrives, and then right on the minute, BAM, it roars off again. Woe betide the poor schmoe who doesn’t know exactly which train he wants or where it is arriving.

In other words, woe betide me.

There was absolutely no indication that this train was the right one beyond the fact that it was occupying that track at that time (this is good enough for the Japanese). There was every indication that it was the wrong one: the little LED sign on the carriage said “Sendai” when I wanted “Yamagata.” I got on board and sought out someone official. The nice girl at the canteen informed me that yes, this train was bound for Sendai and I should get on the one further up the platform. This was a sound plan for the 5 seconds before the doors hissed shut in my face and the train started moving.

Mild terror ensued.

A captain’s attention was attracted, and he explained that I should get off at the next station, scoot up the side of the train, and get in the right carriages; apparently in Japan they stick two trains together and split them up at a later point. So the train stops, I bail out and head up the platform, seeking my carriages. Ah, there they are! I’ll just get on this – BAM! Doors close, train gone. Frantic gestures to the elderly but stern platform guy are to no avail; the Shinkansen waits for no-one, least of all some poor fool gai-jin who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

At this point I entered light catatonia.

I thrashed round the station for a bit, panic rising, but after a minute I settled down and asked about the next train to Yamagata. The thirty minute interval passed quickly as I checked trains off the “Next Train” board. This time there would be no mistakes. This time I would stand in the right place and be on board in seconds.

The train, and more importantly the carriages I had to be on, blew by me without even slowing down. Um, what? Oh, I see, the Track # that I have to wait by actually extends for three platforms, and I need to be on the one waaaaay down there, where the train is stopping. Nice. One flat-out sprint later and I made it with a full sixty seconds to spare.

Efficiency is a hard task-master.