Tohoku, We Have A Problem

Within the first two weeks of my new commute to Shin Gakko, I was delayed more times than in the previous year combined. I can thank the Keihin-Tohoku line for that. It’s one of Tokyo’s busiest, and as I’m learning, most breakable.

One morning the train stalled in the station for 10 minutes, rattling my confidence in Japan’s to-the-minute timetables. However, as this line also serves the 2,000 students at Shin Gakko, I felt safety in numbers showing up late.

Two weeks later it got worse. Much worse. Ascending the platform at fun-sounding Okachimachi station, I saw a blue train stuck halfway in the station. The doors were closed, but some passengers were inside. Concern crossed the face of the young conductor poking his head out of the window. After an unusually loud horn, the train lurched forward 15 feet and halted. On the opposite side, a green Yamanote line train glided into the station. I smirked to the suckers stuck inside the blue train, and hopped aboard.

Blue and green lines run parallel before green splits off to loop around central Tokyo. I thought I’d be clever to bypass the disabled blue train by riding the green one to the last of their shared stations, and catch a blue train further down the line.

Four stations later, I joined the throngs at Tabata station. I had outsmarted myself. There were no blue trains here. Everyone was waiting for the one stuck at Okachimachi. And when it did get moving, that train would be packed with four stations of stranded commuters.

Long overdue, the blue train arrived to an agitated swarm of commuters jockeying for inside position. I laughed to myself. They would never all fit. I didn’t join the fray because I had chosen a poor day to shed my laptop’s bulky carrying case in favor of an unpadded messenger bag.

As only the Japanese can do, everyone squeezed aboard. Except for me. Alone on the platform, I felt their stares drawing me inside. I scanned their pained expressions and noticed a woman smiling at me. I returned her smile with a shake of my head. I was waiting for the next one, which would be almost empty. Had I outsmarted myself again?

The doors never closed, and passengers were gasping. Embarrassment turned to satisfaction as riders rethought their decision, and began lining up behind me. An incomprehensible announcement (at least to my ears) led more to switch sides until the train was less full than when it arrived. That’s when I went in.

I spotted two of my students standing inside. Now with enough space to safeguard my laptop, I joined them. They became my lifeline for what qualified as a serious delay, but one that was seriously refreshing.

Some locals gathered along the fence watching the empty tracks. The silence was deafening. Today, the rails shined brighter. Concrete buildings looked a little more charming. The unpredictable had tossed routine on its head. Fretting commuters checked their wrists while I rocked back on my heels.

I spotted the same youthful conductor, and took an interest in his increasing exasperation. No one confronted him, but he could feel the scorn of hundreds of grumbling commuters. I wanted to buy him a beer after this run. It was Friday for me, but his weekend (career?) was ruined. He announced alternative routes to reach destinations, including mine. It involved transferring three times when all I wanted to do was take this train directly there.

If you’re late, you might as well be really late. I wasn’t in the mood to move, and of course the lazy junior high kids weren’t either. Service resumed after 20 minutes, and despite a reverse commute, plenty of people were now waiting to go to the suburbs. I staked out a corner and stood facing the wall to shelter my bag in front of me.

The conductor announced stops with his eyes closed. He looked 22, and was breaking out around his temples. The microphone trembled in his white-gloved hands. His voice remained composed over the P.A. system, but speaking from the back of his mouth and not his diaphragm, it sounded like each word would be his last. The burden of everyone’s lateness was suffocating him.

And then it suffocated me. Passengers flooded in at the next station. I saw one of my students get carried away in the human tide. Uniforms, briefcases, and backpacks crunched together. I got thrown face-first into the wall, and the safe zone for my laptop vanished. I elbowed the bag above the masses, and cradled it on my shoulder like a baby in rising floodwaters. Toes tingled and my arm tired; I rested the bag on a schoolboy’s back, his cheek smeared against the glass.

When the doors opened at my station, it was like pulling the stopper out of a bathtub drain. Train etiquette in polite Tokyo doesn’t include waiting for passengers to exit before boarding. I waited until the flow had reduced to a trickle to make my move, but once again misjudged. The tide reversed itself before everyone had cleared out, and commuters – backed up into the stairwells – rushed in.

I punched into work 30 minutes late, but was hardly the last to arrive. Quadruple suicide? I asked the other teachers the cause of the delay.

“Nah, they can hose that down in five minutes,” another foreign teacher said. “It must have been a signal problem.”

On the way to first period, I mechanically asked a high school girl, “Hi, how are you today?”

“I’m surviving,” she said with a smile. Surprised at her skillful English expression, I couldn’t have agreed more.