I hate train tickets! 24th March 2007

Today was our first day in Tokyo. We bought a shinkansen ticket (bullet train ticket) and were on our way there. I held the ticket in my hot little hands the entire time because I was so scared of losing it! When we arrived in Tokyo, we got out of the train and headed towards the ticket machine where we had to put our tickets through. Just before we got there, Steve asked me if I had my ticket. I looked in my hand and it wasn’t there! I lost my $150 shinkansen ticket and there was nothing I could do about it!

I went to the ticket booth and explained the situation to them in the little Japanese I had. Steve helped me speak to them because he knows more Japanese than I do. The man was getting very impatient with us because he was probably thinking that we were stupid Westerners who had no idea what we were doing…which was kinda true! We asked him what we could do about it and he told us that I had to buy a whole other ticket to get out of the train station! That would have cost me $150 just to get out when I had already paid the money. I was so annoyed. He was thinking one of two things: I was either really stupid or I was a liar. I kept on saying to him that I had lost it and eventually, he got sick of seeing my face (so it seemed) that he just gave me a ticket so I could get through. He must have thought I was stupid. I was happy about that because I would rather have him think I was a stupid than have to pay an extra $150! Tina, Steve and I thanked him so many times and we could just see on his face that he didn’t want to hear our thankyous, he just wanted us to get out of his sight! So we did, as quick as a flash we were out of his sight!

Anyway, I put my ticket through the machine and was so excited that I didn’t have to pay all that extra money. I was free, but I wasn’t free. We still had to put our ticket through the next machine and I realised that I had forgotten to get my ticket out of the previous machine I had gone through. So I lost the second ticket. We then had to spend another ten minutes explaining to the next guy the situation that I had lost my first ticket, then I lost my second ticket…Well this guy was more impatient than the last guy and he just waved his hand to let me through because he didn’t even want to hear my story! So he let me through, not out of kindness, but out of frustration! Well I will never do THAT again, that’s for sure! I tin-assed my way out of that one!