Japan: Fukui

The night before we'd decided to go to Kyoto on our last day to see a castle and maybe some shrines. We needed to get up early to make it to Kyoto as it was past Osaka, so about an hour of traveling via subway.

We got up at 0715, got ready, had breakfast and left the ship by 0815. It was our last day so we needed to head back for about 1600 to ensure we were on the ship by 1800. We take the Port Line to Sannomiya and change trains there to get the Special Rapid Service to Kyoto. 50 minutes later we're in the Kyoto Station. Now we need to find the Taikiedo Line to get to Nijo in Kyoto. We ask the information woman, who speaks no English, but we show her our map. She points us to her right where we saw people lining up. We'd also seen a JR Taikiedo sign so we figured that must be the one. So we all get in the line of people waiting. We decide we're not gonna get a ticket because we hadn't turned our other one in yet. We'll just walk through if we have to. We'd spent 1050 yen on that ticket. Way expensive.

A train pulls in and it looks very similar to the Bullet Train, we're now a little confused. But Nijo is a good distance from the Kyoto Station so this must be it. And it says JR. We ask a few people "Taikiedo?" They nod. We question this decision but get on anyways.

A bunch of the cars say reserved, like the Bullet Train. It's nice seats and a drink service, too. Unlike the subway. We walk to the car that says non reserved and sit down. Nic and I sit together and flip our Japan guidebook open to the Kyoto map and ask the woman selling drinks if this goes to Nijo. She looks at the map and can't seem to figure it out and hands it back. No one speaks English.

The trains keeps going. About 10 minutes pass and we're no longer in city/urban areas. The landscape has turned to mountains, flat lands, and little houses in the distance. I notice an older woman across the row and get her attention. I point to my watch and try to ask when we get in to the next stop. She looks confused but motions for me to sit in the empty seat next to her. She points to her own watch to show 1030. I point to the train and try to explain next stop. She motions to write. So I dig through my bag for my journal. She writes down Fukui. I point to my watch. She writes 1030. I point to Fukui and then my watch. Now she understands. She writes 1130. Shit. I thank her and inform Nic.

We realize we've made a huge mistake in trains. I go back and tell Sam, Becca, and Tania. Everyone freaks out. We don't have tickets for this and they'll soon be checking tickets. Sam moves up and sits behind us with a Japanese man. He starts talking to her with his little Japanese. She gathers that it's a 5000 yen ticket to Fukui. We give him our guidebook to show up where it is on the map because we can't find it. He laughs. It's not on the map. We're headed for the west coast of Japan. Oh no. We have maybe enough money for a one way ticket to Fukui and we need to make it back to Kobe. Which is then 3 hours away. And we have to be back by 1600.

Nic decides she needs to smoke and Tania goes with her. It's a non-smoking train. But they run into men who work on the train. They manage to explain the situation to them that we're lost and on the completely wrong train with not much cash. They return and take all of us to wait by the door. We're no longer allowed to sit as we have no ticket. And we've still got a half an hour to Fukui.

We try to figure out from them how we can get back and if we can get back. My concern is that it's a Saturday and we're taking a train to the middle of nowhere. How many of these run back to Kyoto, Osaka, or Kobe? I'm thinking of the Amtrak back home. We manage to tell them we need to be in Kobe by 1600. They laugh then look concerned. Not what we wanted to see. They can't seem to give us any information about getting off. The only English they seem to be good at is "Pay?" We say no, we have little cash. They also knew: "Credit card?" And point to all of us. We slowly nod. It's going to be 9300 yen! No way do we have that kind of money. But we need to get back. They tell us to stay where we are and someone is meeting us when we get off the train to sort this out. I've summarized what took 20 minutes of broken English, Japanese, signaling, and writing.

Now on the plus side, the scenery here is obscene. The mountains are huge and snow covered. They're beautiful. The grounds covered in snow too. I took some pictures that I'll upload to facebook as soon as I have service again.

We get off to be greeted by a young man who speaks pretty good English and an older man with no English who both work for the JR. The young man tells us there's a train leaving for Osaka at 1142 and we can take that back and transfer from there to get to Kobe. He laughs at us and our stupidity and explains where we are. He's really nice. He tells us to get off at the Osaka stop and stay in car 5 of the train and not move from there. From Osaka someone will meet us and tell us where to go. It will get in at about 1330. Now we've calmed down realizing we'll be able to get back in time. We explain we have to get back to our ship and that we're in college and from America. The older man understands this when Nic says she's from New York and gets excited and says "Baseball! Yankees!" There are even Yankees fans in Fukui. Can't escape them.

The train comes and we thank them. This ride takes 2 hours, but gives us a chance to relax. We were so freaked out on the last train. We'd barely talked to each other and were so concerned about getting back. Had this not been the last time with limited time we wouldn't have freaked out, but laughed it off and maybe explored Fukui. Time crunch made that impossible. Everyone napped or read or did something.

We got to Shin-Osaka. We weren't sure if they meant Osaka or Shin-Osaka, but either way we knew we could get back from either one. We'd been through both before. Plus we figure if they're waiting for us in Osaka we'll have to pay a ton of money for the tickets, so we get out here. As soon as we step out one of the train workers runs out and tells us this isn't our stop and that we need to get back in, ours is the next stop. We get back in. 10 minutes later we're in Osaka. Now we're greeted by another young man. He gives us printed directions in English to take the Local to Kobe. The end direction says to meet someone when we get off in Kobe. Someone will be waiting for us. Again. They've all been signaling ahead to tell each station about us and to meet us there.

We're put onto train 5 again. We thank this man and say goodbye. A man working by this train directing people in makes sure we get into 5. They're watching us. We manage to get 5 seats right near each other and disucss. We now realize that they're not just looking out for us concerned about us getting back, they want their money. We're also now on the trains we know. This whole time we've been saying we need to get to Kobe, but we didn't mean the Kobe Station. We meant the Port in Kobe. The Sannomiya stop is 2 before Kobe. If we can get off their undetected we won't have to pay up 18000 yen (close to $200). But they're watching us out the sides. And it's easy to spot 5 American girls together. They think we're completely stupid and have no idea where we are.

We decide to try our luck getting off at Sannomiya. That's where we need to take the Port Line from anyways. We decide if we're going to do this we need to move from car train 5, split up into smaller groups, change our appearance a little, and get off with the crowd. Sam goes one way, Becca and I move to car 4, Nic and Tania move to 3. I take off my bright blue scarf and Nic takes off her bright blue jacket.

A few stops later we're in Sannomiya. We get off and luckily there's a big enough crowd. We look confident and scan the crowd for each other. We've made it. We get downstairs and try to use the card we bought in the morning. It won't work. We bought it in Sannomiya. We go to the machine to adjust the fare. It won't work. It just eats Nic's card. There's no way out. There's too many workers there watching the turnstyles to jump them. And there's 5 of us. We have no choice but to go to the window. We show them our tickets and try to explain we came from Osaka and forgot to buy tickets. They don't seem to believe this. Any story we tell they know we somehow cheated the system somewhere.

They're really confused how we've done this and tell us we owe 8000 yen each. WHAAAAAT. Again we don't have this money. We ask if there's a lost ticket fee we can pay, we'd be willing to pay 1050 yen again, but definitely not 8000. They tell us to step aside and get out of the way. We're now trapped in the JR system with no idea how to get out. After a minute a young woman comes out and speaks English. We look sad and explain that we don't have tickets, etc. She motions for us to walk through and leave. FOR FREE. Let me reiterate this. WE WALKED OUT OF THERE WITH PAYING A CENT. They lost about $1000 USD on the 5 of us. We wonder how long it took them to realize we were gone and they got ripped off. We're now wanted by the JR train police.

We hurried out of there, but only after Nic bought a jacket at the local store. We headed down the streets of Sannomiya near where we'd eaten a few nights ago. We went to a place with Kobe beef. I had a delicious spicy noodle bowl with beef and pork. It was so good. I have a new love of spicy foods. Also, I got some type of dumplings. And we all ordered sake. After a leisurely lunch we headed back to the Sannomiya Station to the Port Line. (Not the JR. We avoided that) We took it back with a ton of other SAS people and got off 2 stops later at the Port Terminal.

We escaped from the trains unscathed. We bought our last souvenirs in the Terminal and got in line to get back on the ship. It took a little while, but we got back on. I handed in my passport and sent out some postcards. We had some dinner, told stories, and reunited with everyone before we left port. JD couln't believe our story of that day and how we managed to mess up one of the most perfect subway systems in the world. I have to admit, the subway system was insane and literally went everywhere.

We all hung out for the rest of the night. I have never been so happy to go to bed for a solid 9 hours of sleep.