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I had an awful dash to work today when a shift was messed up and I had to rush to a branch I had never been to with no time to spare.

The trains here are excellent, but could possible be marked a little more clearly at times. Finding the correct platform is usually quite straightforward, however, if the platform is shared by more than one line, things get horribly confusing.

Today I had to take the Saikyo line, which shares its platform with two other trains. On the noticeboard that announces the arrival times for each train and whether each will be local, or rapid, or express, or semi express or… whatever else they are… the line is called something completely different. Eeehh… why is it done this way?

Luckily I asked another commuter at the platform rather than trusting my instincts today and was given the correct arrival time.

15 minutes and a few stops down, I saw my platform assistant hop off the train and carefully check all the departure times at that station and a few of the signs along the platform. She then ran back into the carriage and told me that if I took the train next to ours it would get me to my destination much faster.

So sweet!

I chatted a little to her for then next few minutes and found out that she was on her way to get some travel vaccinations as she leaves on a world trip next week. If only I hadn’t been so flustered in my rush to work, I might have thought to get her email address and maybe be able to repay her favour one day. I’m so disappointed I didn’t.

I think Patrick and I miss out on meeting a lot of sweet people just because it is the two of us travelling together, we are not quite so approachable, probably even more so because Patrick is easily mistaken for a local.

We do have our lovely friend at Kuchaina though, who seems to delight in us despite our togetherness. We went to dinner there again on Friday and I was a little sad when we were seated by an unfamiliar staff-member.

A few minutes later, however, our friend dashed out from her hiding place and into the middle of the restaurant to wave madly and yell “Konbanwa!” at us before rushing back out to her evening’s post in the kitchen. A very welcoming reception.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 2:41 am and is filed under Tokyo, work, life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.