Brian's Japan Adventure

December 18th, 2007

A lot of time wasted.

I left the house this morning at 10:10 to get to the Hokaiin train by 10:26 and get to Bitchu-Takahashi by 12:30. I arrived on time, signed in and waited. And waited. Yeppers, nobody showed up for the first class. So I sat there and read a Japanese-English dictionary for an hour and forty minutes. Yahoo, was that ever exciting!

One student did show up for the second class, and we talked about food, then we talked about Christmas, then we talked about food some more. Then it was time to come home. If this all sounds very short and simple, that’s because it was. There was only one student…all day.

Trains Delayed

I waited in the cold for thirty minutes for the train to arrive, then rode the train back. Two stops away from Okayama, at what should have been around 10 more minutes until arrival, the train stopped. Then it started again. Then it stopped. Then it started again. It wasn’t a mechanical problem, there was something happening that wouldn’t let the train proceed. There were announcements, of course, but I don’t know what was going on. Between stops, starts, and just moving very slowly, the train arrived at Okayama almost an hour late.  So much for being able to say the trains always run on time.

Since I was late, I missed my train from Okayama to Hokaiin. I considered leaving the station, walking a few blocks to eat at CoCo Ichiban, and then taking a bus home rather than wait 40 minutes on the next train.  In the end, laziness won out and I sat there and waited for the train. There’s no way to know when the next bus would have come past CoCo Ichiban, and it’s really COLD out there tonight.

So I eventually arrived at Hokaiin, over an hour later than usual. I pick up something to eat at the carryout and ride the bike on to the apartment. I immediately switched on the TV to watch the news, but the news was over (it’s after 7, remember?). I still don’t know what the delay was all about. A jumper or train wreck I guess, but I may never find out now.  It’s now after 8:30, and I have done virtually nothing all day except talk to one student for an hour and a half.

Tomorrow is a day off, since I did the kindergarten on Saturday and the adult classes are off for five weeks. I’ll start the day off at the library for the Internet. Hopefully everything will work this time. After that, I dunno. I really am not in the mood for any kind of “adventure” tomorrow. To be honest, I really don’t even want to go downtown to the library tomorrow, but I have people waiting for pictures, so I’ll do it.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Japan, Teaching. 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.