So It is that time of year again were I visit my sister and somehow manage to find myself in a bar writing about the day. Considering I have had this blog now for 3+ years it would probably seem to the common observer that stuff only ever happens to me when I’m in japan. This could be true? However I suspect it is more likely that when I’m in japan I find myself in a pub with no one else willing or able to listen to my random ramblings and therefore end up writing a blog entry. I’m not sure maybe I should try writing a blog when I get back home to see if there is anything that I actually have worth saying about the UK.
The other reason I am writing a blog is because my brother (in-law) Kotaro, who is probably my only reader has been hounding me to write another entry. To be honest I had pretty much given up but for some reason he seems to enjoy them. So Kotaro if I end up a little worse for were when we meet for fugu in a few hours I will blame you.
Ok so I have just taken a moment to wonder if this will be the cause of me missing out on fugue yet again. For those that don’t know I have been to japan 4 or 5 times now. I keep meaning to work out witch it is but I have been saying 4 or 5 times now since I have been here and it now seems a bit strange to try and pin it down. Anyway each time that I have visited japan I have attempted to eat fugu. The poisons Japanese fish made famous by, among other things, Homer Simpson.
Now for one reason or another each time I have tried to eat fugu something has gone awry. I can’t recall what has happened in each incident but the last time is probably the most amusing, at least in retrospect. As I wrote in my previous entries the last time I was here I visited Hiroshima. As I wrote that entry while I was in Hiroshima the reader won’t be aware of the issues I had getting back
Before I start I should say that my brother prepared me a very thorough plan. It had the time, place and activity I should be doing for both days I was in Hiroshima. The plan, bound in a folder, also contained platform numbers, tram lines, maps and other useful information. I’m not sure if this level of preparation is a Japanese thing or if my brother is just a little meticulous [anal]. It is more likely that he knows what I’m like and thought that was the best way to stop me getting confused, in trouble or finding myself stranded on the other side of the country. I guess he underestimated my powers.
Anyway the first day went pretty well. The guide was very useful and apart from the odd deviation nothing went to badly wrong. The second day was a little different. I had drunk a little bit of shochu the night before and so didn’t make the 8:00am start which had been planned. As if that was going to ever happen. This wasn’t a big problem a couple of things were moved around and the odd thing dropped and I got to see the things which were most important. Things probably hadn’t gone as perfectly as they would have with kotaro but they went pretty much as expected for john.
After this I headed home. The trip home was a simple shinkansen train journey to Tokyo were my sister and kotaro would meet me at the train. After which we had planned to go eat Fugu with kotaro’s parents before going for some drinks. Great plan?
Now before I continue I would like to ask a question, actually ill just state a fact. In the UK we do not know what platform a train is going to leave from in advance. When I say in advance I mean you are lucky to know 30 minutes before the train leaves. Even then it has the potential to change at any minute just to make things interesting. So I didn’t even think to check the portfolio prepared by kotaro to see what platform I would be leaving from. Instead I choose to ask one of the information stewards. She spoke good English, looked at my ticket and directed me to a platform. The next train leaving left at exactly the same time as mine and was shinkansen.
Obviously it wasn’t the correct train or I wouldn’t have drawn this out o much. Anyway I got on the train and continued to look for my reserved seat, only to find an old man sitting in it. Now this I knew this didn’t happen in japan. UK yes your seat could a) have been double booked; b) just have someone sitting in it regardless. I approached the man and in my very bad Japanese tried to explain he was in my seat. Luckily he spoke pretty good English, looked at my ticked and confusingly agreed that we had both been booked in on the same seat. He suggested we wait for the ticked inspector and get him to sort it out.
I immediately knew something was wrong so continued to ask question before coming to the all-important question of “does this train go to Tokyo”. By this time I had attracted a small gaggle of listeners trying to work out what this stupid westerner was doing. As soon as I mentioned Tokyo there was a faint mummer of “ohh, Tokyo; he’s trying to get to Tokyo; oh no, this isn’t the train to Tokyo”. My Japanese’s is not that good but that’s what they were saying. Anyway the old man confirmed I was not going to Tokyo and was in fact traveling in the opposite direction
For people who don’t know what the shinkansen is, it is the fastest (I think) train on the planet. As it is so fast it has a limited amount of stops, about one an hours. This meant that my mistake of getting on the wrong train took me about 200 miles away from my original destination. To make things worse the phone I had had borrowed had run out of batteries and the phone on the train only took cards. My only option was to wait until I got to my new destination, phone my sister, having exceeded her expectations of how inept I can be when faced with a perfectly organised travel system before finally receiving some assistance.*
Well I got to the station and the next train going back to Tokyo left in 7 minutes. Not much time to phone my sister (who would then need to phone kotaro) and get advice. Either way I phoned her and it was decided that the best way forward was to just get on the train and pretend to be a stupid foreigner who got on the wrong train. Ok so I didn’t need to do much pretending. I did this and luckily the train inspector found the whole thing rather funny and let me ride the journey back to Tokyo with no extra charge.
I later found out that after my sister spoke with kotaro, he set his entire team of staff to work on getting things sorted for me. So if I hadn’t jumped on the train I would have had a flight back to Tokyo the next day, a hotel to stay at and some stuff to see while visiting this unexpected place. It is nice to know you have family that will divert a team, responsible for the president of a multi-million pound organisation, onto the task of fixing a cock up made by their wife’s little brother. The best thing about that is that the president would have probably condoned kotaro’s actions. One of the many reasons why I love japan.
Anyway that was a very long way of saying I missed fugu night.
*my sister helped me phrase this sentence correctly
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