First a quick "toilet" blog update. I have been very thankful for our toilet seat covers as we have been awakening to 44 degree temperatures "inside" our house.
But moving on, I know that this may come as a shock to many of you but if truth be told, I really don't have that many brilliant ideas. However, in early November I had one. There are a number of different train lines in Japan, and one of Daisy's students gave us tickets for the Keisei line which begins in Ueno and ends at the Narita airport. Daisy's student had done this before, and we enjoyed going to the airport and just walking around in the many shops.
The tickets were due to expire on November 30th and November was looking like a busy month. But I realized that November was a five-Sunday month and on a 5th Sunday, we don't have any ministry responsibilities, so my brilliant idea was this: go to church in Higashi Kurume, leave our car there, take the Seibu line train to Ikebukuro (about $3 each), take the Yamanote line train to Nippori (about $1.50 each) and use our free Keisei line tickets (saving $10 each) to take us the rest of the way to shop at the airport. Since church (English speaking I might add) is over around 10:45 a.m. and it takes a little less than two hours for the trip, we could eat at the airport and have all afternoon to shop. Daisy reminded me that the kind of gifts we were looking for could probably be purchased in Asakusa, a much closer town, but that didn't seem nearly as exciting as my idea.
Great plan. I was really excited to get going, but as we went to the car after church, I reached in to get my backpack with all my cameras.... it wasn't there. I remembered I had set it in the hall at our house where I would have to trip over it on the way to the door so as not to miss it but... I missed it anyway. I could have done without my cameras, but my backpack also contained the free tickets! This meant wasting close to an hour driving back home to get the tickets, which we did. Then we drove to our local train station (Higashimurayama), parked the car at Ito's (department store that charges for parking) and hopped on the train.
Since we had lost that hour and were both getting hungry, Daisy suggested that we go to Ueno, eat at TGI Fridays
and then get on the Keisei line there. That sounded like a good idea, and fortunately we both ate the same meal cause it was loaded with garlic. So after we ate we got on the train. I was excited because the train was a limited express, which would get to the airport sooner since it doesn't stop at all the stations. After we got on the train, there were a number of announcements. Now you have to understand that in Japan no one seems to listen to the announcements that occur before each station. They usually announce where we are and other lines that also stop there if one needs to transfer, but all the Japanese seem to know where they are and how to get where they're going so they pay no attention; and besides the announcer always sounds like he swallowed the mike (we think they go to a special school to learn this skill) so even if we could understand Japanese, we wouldn't be able to understand what he says--so we don't pay much attention either.
However, there seemed to be more than the ordinary amount of announcements on this train, and I asked Daisy if she thought they were saying anything important. She assured me that unless everyone starts getting up and leaving the train, they probably aren't. At the 3rd stop (Takasago, 12 minutes into the trip), the doors opened and there was another announcement. In the middle of this announcement, heads began to turn, people looked around and suddenly everyone started standing up and getting off the train. Now as Daisy had mentioned, we've learned that it is not a good sign when everyone exits a train that is nowhere near its destination!
We quickly looked around and I said, "Anyone speak English?" A young lady with her family quickly came over and said, "Do you understand?" We said no, and she told us that the train would go no further due to an accident ahead, and that they had announced we would have to go back to Nippori (the first stop after Ueno) and take the JR train line to the airport. (We had no free tickets for the JR train line!) The lady also said that we might be able to take a bus or a taxi and that the train line would pay for it. This was all well and good, but we had no way of explaining this to those who would be responsible to get us to the airport.
So Daisy suggested that we just go back to Ueno and take a short subway line to... yes you guess it, Asakusa, and do our shopping there, which we did. We were able to find the things we were looking for and had a good time. By the time we got home, we were pretty tired and actually glad that we hadn't gone all the way to the airport.
So my brilliant plan was about as good as the time I tried to...
Tug on Superman's cape, or the time I tried to,
Spit in the wind, or the time I tried to,
Pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger,
etc. etc. (You people who liked 70's music will understand!)
So if I have any more brilliant ideas, I'll be sure to let you know but don't hold your breath.
P.S. At least Ito's didn't charge us to park. We have no idea why, but as is often the case, the exit gate to their parking lot was up so what would have cost us $10 was free!
P.S.S. I didn't have a lot of pictures for this blog so I thought you might enjoy a couple signs that were on one of the trains.
