I might be late
January 13, 2009
I wrote about the train delay last summer due to a fairly crazy storm that I guess was zapping trains left and right. After commuting from JR Osaka to Shin-Osaka for a year, I can tell you that the well-thought idea that Japanese trains are always on schedule is a big fat lie. I would guess that the train I took to school were late at least once a week.
Of course, when I say late, I usually mean by a couple of minutes, nothing to get worked up about. I have my Ipod, I have my sudoku on my phone, I have enough patience. Once every so often though, the train comes really late. I have learned that when a train comes as late as 55 minutes, and when another train that heads in the same direction is diverted to another platform, it usually means someone killed themselves by jumping in front of a train. It’s actually a fairly common problem in Japan. People, if you must kill yourself, do it in your own home and don’t make a mess – it just inconveniences other people.
When a train does come late, the train stations offer little slips of paper that have the date and how many minutes the train came late. It’s like a note from your parents that you gave to your teacher when you were late or sick for school.
You give this slip to your boss and hope that he doesn’t make you stay until 3am to make up for the lost time. The strange thing though, at Shin-Osaka station, they have baskets of different times: 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. minutes. You can choose how late you want to be. I was about 20 minutes late but for kicks I asked for the 60 minute slip. No problem – the geeky looking dude gave it to me without any strange looks. The strange look came when I tried to take his picture by the baskets though.
