Trains and Buses, Buses and Trains

Public transportation is great here and is oddly the cause of most of my exercise. The trains and buses are always on time and I am always late. I can be found frantically biking and/or running to the station or bus stop at least once a day. At least the weather has gotten a bit cooler now so I'm not as sweaty!

There are several bus stops conveniently located a couple of blocks away from my apartment. When you get on a bus in Japan, you grab a slip of paper from a machine by the door. This slip of paper has a number on it (the number of your stop on the bus’s route). This number corresponds to a board at the front of the bus which will tell you what your fare for the trip is. The amount of the fare is digitally written underneath your number and gets adjusted the further from that stop you go. When you get off the bus, you put the correct change that matches the board in the coin machine by the driver. I usually take the bus to my schools on Monday and Friday. Transportation cost to my Monday school is $2.60 each way and $6.80 each way to my Friday school.

I used to take the bus to the school I go to on Tues-Thurs, too, but I’ve found the train is cheaper. It cost $3.70 each way by bus but it’s only $1.80 each way by train. What a deal! My apartment is located about 12-15 minutes from Kanazawa Eki (the main train station pictured below) by foot and 5-7 minutes away by bike, depending on traffic lights. I go two stops (7 minutes) on the train then walk another 7-10 minutes to the school.

Okay, sorry, enough about my boring commuting times and costs. Here are a couple train related stories to wake you up…

Before school started, my friend Ali and I took a trip to Kyoto (someday, I’ll hopefully blog about it). We were at the train station about half an hour before our train was due to depart back to Kanazawa. A train pulled up and most everyone who was in line got on. It didn’t look like the Thunderbird Express train we had taken there (yes, the train was really called the Thunderbird Express) but we decided to get on anyway as trains often come early and sit on the tracks and our train was the only one listed on the board. Anyway, you can probably tell what’s going to happen next. Yep, the train doors closed as soon as we got on and it started moving… in the wrong direction. We had gotten on the wrong train with no idea where it was going or how long it would be before it stopped. At this point there was only 20 minutes before the Thunderbird was supposed to fly away. Luckily, the train stopped after about five minutes and we were able to hop off. We rushed to a different platform and just managed to catch a train that we hoped was heading back to the station. With six minutes left, the doors of the train opened back at Kyoto Eki and we plunged into the throng of black-haired, black-suited commuters. We had of course arrived at Track 7 and had to get to Track 0 (I know, Track 0 seemed odd to us, too). I picked up my suitcase on wheels and was sprinting around people shouting “Sumimasen!!” (“Excuse Me!!”). We jumped into the Thunderbird just before the doors shut and collapsed in our seats, laughing hysterically in relief while the Japanese just looked at us bemusedly.

Last week, I was hurrying to catch the train home from school and tried to jump on as the train doors were closing. Unlike my beloved MetroTransit Light Rail, the doors of the train didn’t seem to have any sensors on them and kept closing. I was stuck halfway in the train and halfway out. I managed to wriggle in so only my bag (with my laptop in it) was stuck in the door. I was still attached to my bag though as the strap was around me. Some giggling high school girls tried to help by pushing the button to open the doors back up but it wasn’t working. Finally the doors gave a little and I was able to pull my bag in and the train started rolling. My face burning, I sat down and decided that next time I would just wait the twenty minutes for the next train.

Okay, those are enough embarrassing stories for now. I’m sure I’ll have more for you soon enough.