Japan Train Blues
So I wake up and I’m in Japan. Not just that, I’ll be here for awhile. Living in a small, cold house, and alone for most of the day without any certainty is definitely an insecure feeling. The only thing to do is learn and try and get by. So that’s just what I’ve been trying to do.
Takayo was teaching me to use the trains. The rail map looked like a tangled plate of spaghetti, a color coded nightmare. She arranged an itinerary for me and using the internet and my Tokyo city atlas I tried to make due. She played a tough game and made me do everything. After all she had to work the next day and from that point on I was on my own. So from the station near our place in Yokosuka, we took the Keihin-Tohoku line up to Yokohama station. Without looking at the rail signs, the place is a chaotic swarm of moving people. So it was easy to lose sense of things.
She made me transfer to several different rail lines in order to go to different locations. I was supposed to get off at the Kikuna station on the Minatomirai line. After several stops I was convinced we had a few more to go. But to my horror I saw the Kikuna sign disappear behind the closing doors of the train as it began to lurch forward.
Yesterday was my first time riding the trains by myself. Takayo and I have come up with a learning game. Each day she gives me a new assignment, or rather a destination to go to. So with shaking hands and a thumping heart I passed through the ticket gate of the Yokosuka-chuo station and took the limited express up to Yokohama.
Takayo assigned me to go to the Yokohama stadium where the Bay Stars baseball team plays. Once I arrived at the bustling station in Yokohama, I consulted my crumpled pocket map with its red scribblings of helpful notes and wandered up to a platform to catch a JR line train to Kannai. There were trains on both sides of the platform, and each would soon head in opposite directions. I picked the one that seemed correct, and after sitting in it for several minutes looking across at the other train, the insecurity that I’d selected the wrong train turned into a palpable fear. I nudged the fellow to my right who was sleeping.
“Does this train go to Kannai?” I asked in Japanese.
“No, that one is on the opposite side.”
“Whoa! Thanks a lot!” I rushed off and took the correct train just as it was leaving, and two stops later I was in Kannai loitering about the baseball stadium. I snapped a photo to prove I’d made it.
Today I face a slightly more difficult assignment. Takayo is sending me to Kawasaki which is even busier than Yokohama. Once there I have to leave the station by foot and walk to the Keikyu-Kawasaki station and take the Keihin-Tohoku line back to Yokosuka.
If dear reader, you are confused by all of these different train lines and stations I’ve mentioned and can’t keep it straight, you’ll know just how I feel. God forbid I should catch the wrong train and wind up who knows where.