Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Finding the one American in a sea of Japanese

I’ve had a frustrating past couple of days academically, so to take my mind off of it, and keep myself from crying frustration tears, I thought I’d tell you the funny that occurred while at the train station.

After spending hours on a project for a class, G-man texted me saying to meet him at the Yokohama train station for sushi. We found a great little sushi restaurant there and enjoy going as often as we can. In case you think train station and have your mind go in the gross department, Yokohama’s train station is huge. It basically has two huge malls attached on each side of it, with a ridiculous amount of restaurants and sweets stands.

Any way, I make my way to the station, and go to use my PASMO card to exit, when it makes the bad “ding dong” sound and blocks me with the arms. I didn’t have enough money on my card to exit! It would be fine if I had cash on me but I didn’t have a cent, and I was literally stuck in between the stairs to the platform and the machines that let everyone out. It was the rush hour crowd and all I could do was fight the crowd like a fish going upstream, just to get out of their way to stand to the side.

I desperately searched any free wi-fi connections so I could text G-man, but couldn’t get any, and frantically searched every face that walked by for that distinct American one so I could ask for their help. Only, I couldn’t find any. I would say close to 200 people walked by me in the long seven minutes of searching before I finally spotted that one lone American. I ran up to him and begged him to help me. I’m sure he thought I was a little crazy, but once I explained I didn’t have money and no phone, he said he’d help. I asked if I could use his phone, but he offered to pay my fair adjustment instead. Surprisingly, he wanted to put $10 on my card but I quickly refused and asked he only pay what I needed to exit. We walked over to the station workers and I was .90 (Japanese cents) off. Just a measly .90 cents. The American laughed at the small amount, and gladly paid it, while I embarrassingly thanked him over and over. I offered him to walk with me to G-man to repay him, but he turned it down, and after thanking him over and over again, we parted ways.

I can’t imagine what would have happened had he or any other American not passed by. The throngs of Japanese that whizzed past were all on missions and couldn’t be bothered, so I was so thankful he appeared for me to snatch him. G and I had a good laugh once I finally made it to the restaurant, and we now have put money on my PASMO card so this won’t happen again but that seven minutes was the longest loneliest seven minutes ever.

                                                                   appropriate yet random train conductor photophoto (7)
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1 comment:

Amanda Wissmann said...

Oh geez...this sounds like something that would happen to me. So glad you found that one american :)

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