Thursday, August 28, 2008
Not again 
Right before my final class, a student walked in late to the group I was teaching and announced that there was a suicide on the Odakyu and all trains from Hon-Atsugi to Shinjuku have been stopped.
Not again.
It was bad enough that I was nursing a terrible headache and my left contact lens was torn, but the thought of having to relive my nightmare of spending 4 hours waiting on the train to get home was too much to bear.
I kept my fingers crossed and ran to the station after the last bell, hoping that the situation would be resolved.
No such luck.
The express had stopped and only the local trains was running. That would double my commute time to 90 minutes just to get to Shinjuku, and even then there was no guarantee that it would go all the way to Shinjuku. Morever, the display informed that there would be a further 40-50 minute delay.
I decided that I would take the local 2 stops to Ebina and make my way to Yokohama instead, a huge detour from my home.
Damn, because I was supposed to meet E at my station and we had both planned our schedules nicely. My phone battery was almost flat, so I hurriedly sent him a few messages to explain that I'd have to meet him at his station and stay over at his instead.
We live more than an hour apart from each other, so you can imagine my panic and unhappiness at the sudden change of plans that went beyond my control.
There is something seriously wrong with a society when train suicides have become a fairly common occurence and so disruptive since everything is connected by trains.
Here I am sitting on the Sotetsu to Yokohama, annoyed to the bone and yet I can't do anything. I can't stop inconsiderate people who decide to throw themselves onto the train tracks at peak hour so that "other people can pay" for whatever is wrong with their lives. I mean, don't you want to go in a more diginified fashion? Or at least quietly in a corner?
Japan has to implement more preventive measures at the train station for situations like these. For all its modern conveniences, this is become unacceptable for a modern society. I shouldn't have to worry about people killing themselves on my way home to and fro work.
I just want to go home. Now.
I wrote that on the train last night when I was trying to keep calm, but I ended up calling Mel half-hysterical that I was out in the middle of nowhere and how it wasn't funny, or fair.
My phone went dead on the train and I had no way to communicate, so I went all the way to his station, got off the train and headed to the convenience store and bought a charger for my phone. I had waited about 15 minutes before we decided that I should take the Keihin-Tohoku towards Shinagawa to meet him instead, since our appointments for the weekend were all in central Tokyo.
We were both exhausted and famished when we met up and finally arrived at my station near midnight.
WAH LAU. I spent like 1000 yen on my charger and an extra 1200 yen on my train fare going all around lor!!! 3 hours of my life wasted on the train again, and there was no way I could be compensated for anything. I wanted to kill the guy but he had already killed himself.
It's okay. I'm still here, E's still here, all's still good.
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