The night before we left for Tokyo, Stef went to play volleyball. When she came back, she could hardly move--she had somehow tweaked her back. Having been through my fair share of back problems, I knew exactly how difficult it must have been, and began to worry that it might ruin her trip. She took some Advil and went to bed, hoping that it'd feel better the next morning.
She woke up stiff and sore. Our plan had been to ride bikes to the train station to save money, toting our kids and as little luggage as possible. That was no longer an option, so we took a taxi to the station and hopped on our train to Matsuyama. The early morning trains get packed with people commuting to work, so there weren't any clusters of seats where we could all sit together. We found two seats, but we like to have two rows of two, since we can flip the front seats around and have four seats all facing each other. A man was kind enough to offer his seat to us, which I gladly accepted. We turned out seats around and rode comfortably to Matsuyama en route to the airport.
We got to the airport about 90 minutes before we had to, so there was some time to burn. Stef took the girls for a walk while I took care of the bags. Kelsey sat in the box that they use to gauge whether or not your carry-on item will fit in the overhead compartment, and Stef took a picture. Mia likes to copy Kelsey, so when we met up and went to the security checkpoint, she climbed into the carry-on-checker box up there.
The Matsuyama airport has a really good bakery/café upstairs, so we stopped and grabbed a bunch of pastries to tide us over until lunch.
The Japan Airlines flight we took had rows of two seats on the outer edges, with rows of three seats down the middle. When choosing seats on the JAL website, I picked the two left-side seats of the middle row, and the far right seat of the adjacent two-seat row. I figured that I could keep the girls with me while Stef sat across the aisle.
That never happened. There were a bunch of empty seats on the plane, so the flight attendants told us to sit together in a row. I initially insisted that our seating arrangement was fine, but they wouldn't take no for an answer. Once we were comfortably in our seats, another lady who worked for JAL came in to confirm that nobody was sitting in the seat that we had just been given. Apparently, the person who was planning to ride in the third seat of the middle row wasn't going to be able to make the flight. We sat and watched as the flight attendants awkwardly battled with the lady in charge of confirming the seating. Some people take their jobs way too seriously. I'm no scientist, but I'm pretty sure that a simple change in seating isn't going to cause an implosion or anything.
Our plane was delayed by about ten minutes due to a possible typhoon in Tokyo. When we landed, the horizontal rain was battering everything, and the strong, shifting winds rippled the surface of the steadily accumulating puddles outside.
Our train trip from the airport to Maihama was supposed to only take about an hour, but we ended up spending about two. At the train station in front of the airport, I bought a ticket that supposedly led directly to Kasairinkaikouen station, the station nearest our hotel. The Google Maps directions that I had printed and brought with me said that we had to transfer twice, but the train tickets I bought were a couple hundred yen less expensive than the ones on my directions and seemed more direct, so I thought I might have printed out a less-than-optimal route.
When we were approaching the station where I thought we had to transfer, I asked some people around me if that was the correct station. There's often not a lot of time to transfer on trains in Japan. The doors open for about 30 seconds while people file out and hurry in, then the whistle blows, the doors slam shut, and the train speeds off toward its next stop. The first girl I asked shrugged her shoulders and didn't utter a single word in response, while the men across the aisle were much more willing to help.
One of them told me that I had to wait until our train reached its final destination, then transfer to a line that supposedly would take me right to our stop. Just as the doors closed and the train pulled away from what I thought was the correct station, the man corrected himself, having consulted the internet on his phone. We were supposed to get off where I thought we did.
We got off at the next stop and switched to a train going back the other way, and got off at the correct stop. Luckily, up to this point, all the stations had roofs above us to keep us mostly dry in the typhoon. We went to switch to the Rinkai line, which led to Maihama, but we couldn't figure out how to go through without giving up our tickets, which would have forced us to buy new tickets. Unfortunately for us, there was nobody to help us at the turnstile--no workers were on duty.
Seeing us fumbling and bumbling around, a kind man walked over to an intercom and paged a station attendant, who instead of coming, paged me on a closer intercom. I explained that I had purchased a ticket all the way to my destination, but wasn't expecting to have to relinquish my ticket at a turnstile. He told me that in order to hit the Rinkai line, we had to leave the station, go outside, and cross the street. Keeping our ticket was not an option. He sent someone to help us, who gave us a refund for the difference between our ticket and the one that would've taken us to that station.
You see, there was a way to make it all the way on one single ticket, but it would've involved using a different line owned by Japan Railroads. We had taken the monorail. Trains are confusing in Japan--there are JR trains, non-JR trains, the monorail, city trains, local trains, special express trains, the metro, and the subway. And all seem to go through similar stations and connect to each other. I've lived in Japan for two years, and I still have no idea how the train system works. Just when I think I've got the hang of it, I'm being paged by faceless attendants and getting refunds for buying the wrong tickets.
We walked through the wicket and towards the exit, only to realize that there was no elevator--only a ludicrously long flight of stairs going down to the ground level--and that there was no roof to cover us once we got outside. Stef's back was hurting, so she couldn't carry much down. I carried Mia (in her stroller) halfway down the stairs, resting her and my 2000 pound backpack on a big step. Stef had Kelsey walk down the stairs while I made multiple trips up and down the stairs for all our luggage. Stef took down as much as her back would let her.
Finally at the bottom of the stairs, our next challenge awaited: repack the bags so that the kids, the laptop, and the clothes will stay dry with just three umbrellas and two strollers. Kelsey walked alongside us, holding her own umbrella, while I carried the heavy backpack on my back, another backpack (with the laptop and other stuff) backwards on my chest, and a stroller full of luggage (or Mia--I can't really remember which of us took the stroller of stuff and which took the stroller full of Mia). Stef pushed another stroller. She and I each had an umbrella to try to cover all the stuff as we had to cross two streets with strollers, walking kids, and luggage, all in a typhoon.
While our clothes were pretty wet, we managed to keep the luggage mostly dry. We lugged all our stuff to the platform and caught a train for Kasairinkaikouen station. It's entirely possible that we got on the wrong train there, too. It happened a few times over the course of the trip, but never really cost us more than 15-20 minutes. We eventually got to our station, and we toted our stuff out the exit into a raging typhoon.
We readied the umbrellas and made a mad dash for the covered bus stop, which was halfway between the station exit and the taxi line, which is where we were headed. The wind jerked Kelsey's umbrella out of her hand and blew it across the parking lot. After briefly comforting Kelsey, I dropped all my stuff on the bus stop bench and made a run for the umbrella. The twenty-or-so seconds that it took to retrieve the umbrella were enough to soak most of my clothes.
By this time, I was getting pretty irritable, so while Stef was trying to plan the best way for us to stay dry while we darted for the taxi, I said, "Screw it," grabbed my stuff, and ran willy-nilly into the typhoon. A shouted for the taxi driver to open his trunk, threw my wet baggage in, then went back to help get everything else to the taxi. Perhaps we could have done it a bit smarter, but the "covers" of those bus stops are pretty useless when the rain is coming at you sideways.
The taxi driver took us to our hotel without any shenanigans, and it winded up costing no more than the minimum 710 yen fare. We entered the hotel, drenched and drained from the travel, and ready to relax a bit. Check-in time at the hotel started at 3PM, which just so happened to be when we arrived. We checked in, pulled Kelsey and Mia away from the kids' books that the hotel puts out in the fifties diner-style lobby, rejoiced at the sight of Dr. Pepper in the hotel vending machine, and checked out our room. We had a big bed for the two of us, and a twin bed that we pushed perpendicularly up against our own for the girls to share.
Stef and the girls changed clothes, but I took mine and blew them damp with a blow dryer. I figured I wasn't done getting wet for the day.
We hadn't planned on going to Disneyland that day, so the typhoon, the missing of train stops, and the aimless wandering were more annoying than demoralizing. With the rain being so strong, however, we worried that Thursday and Friday, the days we were planning on visiting the Disney parks, would be ruined as well.
The rain started to let up just before 5PM, so we grabbed two umbrellas and headed across the street to Royal Host, a chain restaurant which I had never seen before. I set my umbrella in the umbrella bin by the front door (which many stores and restaurants require, so as to not drip all over the floor inside). I told Stef, who had entered with her umbrella in hand, to put it in the umbrella bin, since "that's how they do things in Japan." For a brief moment, I felt proud that I was adapting to the Japanese way without really having to think about it.
We sat down and ate a surprisingly tasty meal. As we ate, I noticed that the rain had picked up again outside. We paid for meal and went to the exit to grab our umbrellas. Mine was gone--someone had stolen it. Honestly--what kind of person steals somebody else's umbrella in the middle of a typhoon? I understand that you don't want to get wet, but if there's one time that you should feel the most regret for stealing someone's umbrella, it's during a typhoon. Oh well, he can keep it. He'll need it in HELL!!! Wait.. that doesn't.. uh..
People often say that Japan is basically a crime-free country. While I agree that I usually feel safe at night, and don't worry about getting murdered, the Japanese are not perfect. People will steal a bike if they need to get somewhere. They'll steal an umbrella if they don't want to get wet. And, they'll do plenty of other faceless crimes that don't necessarily cause bodily injury, but are sufficiently irritating for the victim. I've known people to have their bikes stolen, only to find them returned to the same parking lot later.
Anyway, I went to report the theft to the restaurant managed, who first shrugged her shoulders, but eventually offered me her own umbrella. In no way did I want to force someone else to go without one, and I didn't actually expect them to do anything about it. I just wanted them to know where we were staying in case the culprit decided to return it. At the end of what was a very awkward conversation, I shrugged my shoulders and apologized as Stef decided to take the girls with the remaining one umbrella (which, incidentally, would have been two remaining umbrellas if I just followed Stef and didn't do things the way everybody else does them in Japan).
So, I had to brave the rain without an umbrella. All the way across the street. I'm pretty sure I didn't get any wetter walking through the rain (which had let up a lot) than I did sitting next to spill-prone Kelsey at the restaurant. It ended up being mostly a non-issue, except that I now have to buy another umbrella. That night, we didn't really go out (other than Stef making a quick conbini run for ice cream). We stayed inside the hotel, sipping Dr. Pepper and watching TV shows on the laptop--a nice, relaxing end to a turbulent day.
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