Shinkansen Adventures

I spent most of the day rushing to be creative - I am working on a development project at work and had to make 8 course outlines by Monday morning. I also needed to get down to Hamamastu as quickly as possible. I finally finished just after 4:00, so I threw clothes into my bag, grabbed a book to read, gathered the garbage to take out, and flew out the door. My mission was to make the Shinkansen (bullet train) that left at 5:14.

I arrived at Shinagawa station at 5:09 and ran to the vending machine. I hit all the buttons (in order) and then... nothing. I did it again... and the machine shut down!! So I called an attendant over and he directed me to the counter. Luckily there wasn't a line up, so I could walk right up. Time - 5:11. No problem, one minute to buy the ticket, one minute to run down to the platform and one minute to spare. Except the ticket man wouldn't sell me a ticket on that train! Arghhhh!!! So I asked for the fastest train and he gave me a ticket on the Kodama train - which stops at every Shinkansen station. (The Hikari only stops at the main stations and the Nozumi only stops like 4 times the whole length of Japan). So instead of it taking 75 minutes, it would now take 120 minutes. Well, ok.

This was all fine and dandy until five (yes five!) other Shinkansen passed my train! What???!!! Obviously the ticket man was being a dickhead. I did say fastest and not next, so that wasn't the problem. Despite leaving 30 minutes after my train, the next Hiraki train arrived at Hamamatsu station 15 minutes before my train did. I was quite peeved about the whole thing for a while... until I had a little self-talk about 15 minutes not making that much of a difference, so it didn't matter. Of course my irritation wasn't helped by the fact that there was a monster child... or maybe irresponsible grandparent... one row up on the opposite side of the train.

Everyone was quietly enjoying their ride until monster child and grandfather got on the train. Monster child was about 6. Grandpa bought him a toy shinkansen. Monster child then proceeds to shout the likes of: "The doors are closing!", "The doors on the right side of the train will open!", "No doors will open *loud snickering", "This train stops at Tokyo, Yokohama, ...". Now this would have been cute had he been speaking in normal tones. As it was, the people at both ends of the car (we were in the middle) were shooting dirty looks at the pair. Grandpa of course says nothing - just lets the kid continue. I was about five seconds away from leaping over the seats, grabbing the scarf of the woman on the seat next to me, and strangling that kid - or at least gagging him - when, finally!, they got off the train. Peace at last. What a nightmare. At least that snapped the biological clock back a few hours.

I arrived at Hamamatsu around 7:30 and my sister-in-law met me at the station. Every time I see Keiko, she has totally redone her hair and looks totally different, so I was a bit worried that I might not recognize her. I mean, I've only met her about 7 times... and she usually just says hi and runs up to do things in her room. So at 5 seconds a shot, I've been in her presence for less than a minute in all the time Hiroshi and I have been together. Not to worry though - I recognized her immediately, before she even saw me.

Keiko speaks zero English and I speak close to nil Japanese, so I figured the ride home would be an interesting one. It turned out well though. She spoke in simple Japanese and said things slowly so I was able to understand. Unlike my mother-in-law, she doesn't rapid fire ten totally different versions of the same sentence at you at once, so conversation was surprisingly easy. She wants to come and visit when Hiroshi and I move back to Canada. She's also going to come up to Tokyo in the fall and we're going to go to Disneyland together. So that's cool. Despite not having a common language, the communication is going ok and I look forward to being able to talk with her more... some day... when my Japanese improves!

So that was the shinkansen adventure. Maybe next time I'll fork over the extra money to go in the green car - first class essentially. I always thought it had something to do with the environment, or non-smoking, but it turns out the seats are just wider and more cushy, and you get a free drink. Still, it might be worth it if no monster children are in the same car.