A very pleasant train line.

This past week was eventful. I live off of the Chuo line, which is a very pleasant train line, except that it's infamous for being catastrophically delayed. There could be an accident, a suicide, a fire, or an overabundance of passengers that causes severe delays, stranding tons of people and making them massively late to work. I’ve been living here for about two months and haven’t had a single problem with the Chuo line until this week.

It was just fabulous because it was my first week of the new school year. It caused me a lot of problems getting to work. Last Saturday I was twenty minutes late. It took me about two hours to get to the school when it should have been more like 40 minutes. Luckily, when the trains are that delayed the train staff hand out late slips explaining that the train was late. It’s understood that certain train lines are often going to be delayed, so people take these slips and give them to their employers. At least I wasn't really in trouble for being late. It wasn’t my fault. Still, it wasn't a pleasant way to start my first day at a new school. Also, everyone tells me that being late to things in Japan is a really big deal. It’s just not something that's done.

This past Thursday I woke up to the continuous roaring of airplanes flying low over my guesthouse. I immediately thought, are we being attacked? Then I thought, perhaps it’s this Japanese guy living in my guesthouse who claims to be training in the American Air Force at the base in Tokyo. I figured he finally went crackers and tried to fly his plane over the guesthouse so he could say hello and throw down American candy and other essential provisions by way of parachute. He’s always coming into the kitchen as I’m making dinner. He kind of hovers over me for a bit and watches me cook. I ask him what’s up and he says, not much. Then he continues to stare. Eventually he says, “Oh! I have a present for you!” I wait, expecting something rather creepy (this guy has a reputation for being a bit odd). A few minutes later, he comes running in with a fistful of starbursts and milky ways screaming, ‘American candyyyyy for youuuu!” Apparently he has access to top-secret stashes of "American" candy at the American air base.

So I've digressed a bit. The reason there were a ton of planes flying over my guesthouse was because there was a fire at the train station one stop away from mine. The Chuo line was completely down from roughly 8am to 4pm. This was a very, very bad thing because the ONLY train line that stops at my station is the Chuo line. It is impossible to get anywhere from my place if the Chuo line is down. And, yet, my fellow teachers and I are still expected to at least try to get to work. Some gave up and went home, while others attempted to take the bus, which was very brave in my opinion. I, however, was confident that taking a taxi would be the obvious easy solution. This particular school was only four stops away from where I live; in New York, the distance wouldn’t have cost more than about 15 bucks (1500 Yen). Smugly impressed with my own cunning, I gleefully hopped in a taxi without consulting headquarters.

BIG MISTAKE.

(At least I got to practice my rudimentary Japanese with the taxi driver.)

Either the guy took an unnecessarily long route because I was foreign, or taxis are just ridiculously expensive. It may have been both. I ended up getting to work only five minutes before my shift started. The school was happy that I wasn’t late, but they obviously thought me an idiot. One staff member cried, “What!? Don’t ever take a taxi!!” It cost me 4,700 Yen, so almost 50 US dollars. I couldn’t believe it. My company usually reimburses us for all travel expenses to and from work, but I was sure they would never agree to pay for this. In the end they essentially said: “Okay, we’ll pay it this time, but NEVER do that again.”

The kicker was that as I sat down with my first student of the day, I began my warm-up by asking her where she lived.

“Oh, I live in Kokubunji,” she replied.

“Um. Wasn’t there a fire at Kokubunji? How did you get here!?”

“Oh, the trains are running again.”

…

“No.”

…

“Yes.”

...

If I had waited for the trains to start again, I probably still would’ve made it to my first lesson. And it would’ve only cost me $2.