My Eco-Friendly Year : Trains

Last week marked the end of my nearly 400 days without a car. It was a day that should have come about 400 days earlier.

Before I came to Japan, I had visions of riding trains everywhere I needed to go, of the convenience of them all, of me with my nose buried in a book while scenic green rice fields rolled past in the background, surrounded by students and businessmen so plugged in they wouldn’t notice me stealing surreptitious glances in their respective directions.

But then I came to Japan.

And I realized that this romantic vision of train-as-primary-transportation really doesn’t work in reality, because the reality is that trains don’t drop you off in front of where you want to go. They take you to areas, towns, but not specific locations. Even if I took the train, I would still have to walk, bike, or bus to where I actually want to go, and, besides maybe a lovely ten-minute walk beside a river in the balmy autumn air, which never actually happened in reality either, these methods of completing journeys are not romantic and are not convenient and really just cancel out whatever enjoyment I may have gotten from the train ride itself. On which I never actually read a book anyway because there was too high a chance of me getting distracted and then missing my stop, and they don’t run often enough in my area of the middle-of-nowhere to make quick returns practical or timely options.

Akita is not Tokyo, and I don’t live in a movie.

I must always remind myself of these rudimentary facts.

Further, there’s the reality of not living all that close to the train station in my town, which requires a too-long walk or a bus ride to get to. And frankly, I really hate buses, I have always hated buses –  despite the zealous attempts of my grandmother during my childhood to convince me that, really, they are great places to meet new people – and I will continue to hate buses, and on trains I never know where to look. Out the window awkwardly behind me? At the people sitting on the bench across from me? Certainly not eye-level with the people standing up and facing me!…which leaves an uninteresting spot on the floor to study, and even then I usually can’t affect that practiced, glazed over, Japanese stare into nothingness, and it’s more like me, making everyone else on the train uncomfortable because the gaijin girl can’t keep her eyes to herself. It’s just unpleasant for everyone involved.

So, generally, the train situation could have been better, and again my naïve ideas about life in Japan shatter into a million pieces upon actual execution in real life. It wouldn’t be the first time, and even 400 days into my ex-pat existence here, I doubt it will be the last.