Suitcase on the train

I can't believe it's a month today since I flew back to Japan. It doesn't seem that long.

Someone asked me recently about that trip back, and I realised that I didn't tell you about the last leg of the journey, a very Japanese story.

The airport to our house is about 100km, give or take some. I took the trains. Three trains, to be precise. The last train I hopped on was an express and left at around 9pm. I was pulling a significantly sized suitcase, one of the two that helped move my son to Australia. It weighed 27kg (I brought back some stuff, mostly some new Australian-sized towels).

This station is the end of the line that runs past our place, so the trains usually stand open for five or ten minutes before they leave, while people pile on. I arrived three minutes before it left, so it was already very full, though not so full that people were squished together yet. However, to fit me and my suitcase on, they did have to squish a bit.The trouble was, that when you get on that late, you are in the doorway, and my suitcase is a bit wider than the usual person.

This is the station where I hopped on the express train. You can
see there is a culture of waiting patiently in line. The green "bay"
is for the next train. The orange "bay" is for the one after the
next train!

It was fine, until we hit the first stop and people tried to squeeze past my suitcase. Usually two or three people at a time can get off a Tokyo train, but it was definitely single-file in our doorway. I felt really embarrassed and apologised, while trying in vain to shrink my suitcase into a smaller space. 

Eventually enough room had been freed that I saw my chance to manoeuvre me and my luggage away from the door. It meant running over a few toes and I apologised a bit more. But the bottleneck was instantly released and a dozen or more people flowed out of the train.

Probably a more Tokyo-ite response would have been to get out of the train with my suitcase and let everyone out before re-boarding. People do this all the time. They especially do this if they want to remain near the door for an easy exit in a couple of stations time. It is considered the polite thing to do, rather than make people push past you to get through the door. 

However, I was very tired and trying to manoeuvre a suitcase half my weight in and out of the train just seemed like too much (although it was probably an afterthought rather than a real consideration at the time, me not being a true Tokyo-ite yet).

Did I mention that another thing that people get bothered by (and rightly so in a super crowded train) are backpacks? They are definitely frowned upon as taking up too much room. My regular luggage for plane travel is a significantly sized backpack. But in this regard I did a little better, I removed my backpack and balanced it on top of the suitcase in front of me, minimising my "footprint". However that would have made it more difficult to get out of the train with it all and then back on again...

That was my Tokyo welcome! I'm pleased to say I was welcomed by David at the other end of this journey with a hug and a kiss, and a short ride in our van back home.

Nothing like jumping straight back into Tokyo life. Australia was very quickly washed away as a vague dream. Even now, I'm wondering where most of my February went. I'm usually a bit confused at this time of year anyway, but this year it's worse than usual.

Suitcases and trains are especially on my mind because we have to catch the trains with (admittedly smaller) suitcases as a family on Monday morning in the middle of rush hour as we travel to Hokkaido for our mission conference. I'm advocating leaving earlier and taking the non-express trains as a way to avoid inconveniencing others and getting pinned to our suitcases.