The Last Train

About two weeks ago, we had a farewell party for my coworker Eriko. It was held near work, so my last bus was pretty early - 10:50. As always, it took me longer than I expected to extract myself from the party, and I ended up missing my bus by about a minute.

However, due to the brilliant planning of the engineers who designed the Nara Kotsu bus system, the last bus arrives substantially earlier than the last train leaves. So, in addition to the 7-10-minute bus trip, I had an extra 10-15 minutes of margin, assuming I could get to the station in time.

Now, I've walked several times, and it takes about 30-35 minutes, depending on how much stuff I'm carrying. So my thinking was, if I can jog the whole way, I can get there in just under 20 minutes, and that should get me there in time for the train. So I flew out the door, clutching my bag, feet pounding the pavement.

After about 10-15 minutes of this, it became obvious that I wasn't going to make it in time. My starting point had been further from the station than I had internally modeled, and my bag was kind of heavy, making it difficult to run. I switched to plan B, and stuck out my thumb.

Unfortunately, working in the sticks like I do, there are very few passing cars. So I alternated jogging and trying to hitchhike. The first four cars passed by me with no hesitation. After another few minutes, a fifth car came by and I saw brake lights up ahead.

The guys who gave me a ride were bored college students out for a drive in the middle of the night. They seemed entertained at the novelty of picking up a foreign guy hitchhiking out in the middle of nowhere, and they were happy to take me to the station.

As I thanked them and got out of the car by the station, I looked at my watch. I had missed the last train by about 2 minutes! Nooooooooo!

However, I went up to the platform anyway. There are one or two trains after my last train that go about 1/3 of the way to the city, which is better than nothing if I have to take a taxi the rest of the way.

Strangely, my train was sitting there for me.

With the lights out.

And passengers sitting inside.

I was thoroughly confused for a moment, until an announcement came over the loudspeaker saying that somebody had jumped into the tracks a few stations down, and they were busy cleaning up the body parts. (Well, not so explicitly, but they announced an "accident involving human injury" and said that they had turned off the power so that station staff could go down into the tracks, which is the same thing). Suicide by jumping in front of the trains is a popular pastime in Japan.

So I sat down in the dark train car, still sweating profusely from my run, reflecting on the fact that someone gave their life to enable me to catch my last train home.

My last train of the night.

Someone's last train ever.