Time to burn a fortune.
Or Luck's rapid oxidization...
Well, if the last few blog entries
haven't tipped people off, I seem to be having a moderately bad string of bad
luck recently. Today I managed to add to it yet
again.
It started off as being a very busy day to begin with: six classes and only two hours free to do preparation and eat lunch. Since the first three classes started the moment I got in the office, I had to prepare them the night before (actually days before because I don't really enjoy leaving the office late). The classes went off without a hitch, but my lunch break was spent listening to a coworker tell me about their problems with the management. After work I waited around the office for the powers that be in order to discuss the issue with them but that fell through since everyone was too busy trying to finish what they were doing. So I decided, since it was already late, to go out to a pub with some of my coworkers who had actually finished work on time (sorta). The pub was excellent actually. Cozy, and I met some fun folks to chat with. But I made the mistake of deciding to take my last train. I had been avoiding this recently, ever since icey roads on a previous late night caused all the taxis that usually are waiting at my station to give me a ride home to disappear (if I catch my last train back I have to catch a taxi from Katsura because the Arashiyama spur line that runs from their shuts down by then).
I made the train just fine. Or at least I had thought I had. I rode it for awhile and busied myself with writing some email on my phone and gently fighting for elbow room on the crowded seat I had wedged myself into.
Then I heard a station announcment. And realized this was no station I was familar with. I then gave a free demonstration of various American cursing techniques as I rapidly exited the train and checked my bearings.
Hankyu Umeda is a rather confusing station sometimes because there are three different lines leaving from the same huge platform and some of them have local and express versions of the same line. JR also has large amounts of lines coming together in Osaka but each line's platform is separated and clearly marked. Hankyu's trains are not so clearly separated and are fairly clearly marked but I clearly was in another universe when I was choosing express trains this evening. (You can see the train I should have caught here ).
I had jumped on the Takarazuka line instead of the Kyoto line. And it was the last train that would have carried me back to Katsura. Some frantic calls to Aya helped me figure out what my possibilities were for getting home. They were few unfortunately. There were only local trains heading back from Takarazuka so I couldn't get back to Umeda in time to catch the last JR train going all the way to Kyoto. The only options I had really were to either crash at a hotel in Osaka, crash at a fellow teacher's place, or take the last train heading north on JR and ride a taxi from Takatsuki which is a bit over halfway back to Katsura. I opted for the last option because I didn't feel like making someone clean up their apartment at 1am in order to accomidate me and staying at a hotel would probably cost me about as much as the taxi ride back to my place or more. So I jumped a JR train, arrived at Takatsuki at about 1:10am and asked a taxi diver to drive me to Katsura. He was pretty skeptical about giving a foreigner a ride that far. (Foreigners have a bad rep. for stiffing taxi drivers late at night). He held up eight fingers to make sure I knew just how much this was going to cost and I assured him in Japanese that I did and told him to hit the road and we did. I got back to my apartment at about 1:50am after managing to do a pretty good job of telling the driver how to get to my apartment.
I guess the whole situation worked out pretty well (aside of the fact that I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted to and I was out about 80 US dollars). Of course the big questions is, what does this have to do with my starting comment of barbecuing my unlucky streak?
Well, on New Year's morning Ayako and I went to a shrine and got our fortunes told.
Matsuo Shrine on New Year's Eve/Morning
Hers turned out to be great, but mine was a semi-bad one. I didn't give it much thought because Ayako said it wasn't really that bad and that it just said I should be careful. Well, I am starting to give that little slip of paper a bit more thought. The way to dispel/get rid of a bad fortune is to either burn it at a temple or tie it to a tree at a temple and thus let it rise off to the gods. I may just decide to give that a swing with the way things are going. I'll let you know in a future post whether I buried, burned it, or tied it to a tree. Rest assured though, I will be getting rid of it pretty soon. Here's hoping it changes my luck streak.
It started off as being a very busy day to begin with: six classes and only two hours free to do preparation and eat lunch. Since the first three classes started the moment I got in the office, I had to prepare them the night before (actually days before because I don't really enjoy leaving the office late). The classes went off without a hitch, but my lunch break was spent listening to a coworker tell me about their problems with the management. After work I waited around the office for the powers that be in order to discuss the issue with them but that fell through since everyone was too busy trying to finish what they were doing. So I decided, since it was already late, to go out to a pub with some of my coworkers who had actually finished work on time (sorta). The pub was excellent actually. Cozy, and I met some fun folks to chat with. But I made the mistake of deciding to take my last train. I had been avoiding this recently, ever since icey roads on a previous late night caused all the taxis that usually are waiting at my station to give me a ride home to disappear (if I catch my last train back I have to catch a taxi from Katsura because the Arashiyama spur line that runs from their shuts down by then).
I made the train just fine. Or at least I had thought I had. I rode it for awhile and busied myself with writing some email on my phone and gently fighting for elbow room on the crowded seat I had wedged myself into.
Then I heard a station announcment. And realized this was no station I was familar with. I then gave a free demonstration of various American cursing techniques as I rapidly exited the train and checked my bearings.
Hankyu Umeda is a rather confusing station sometimes because there are three different lines leaving from the same huge platform and some of them have local and express versions of the same line. JR also has large amounts of lines coming together in Osaka but each line's platform is separated and clearly marked. Hankyu's trains are not so clearly separated and are fairly clearly marked but I clearly was in another universe when I was choosing express trains this evening. (You can see the train I should have caught here ).
I had jumped on the Takarazuka line instead of the Kyoto line. And it was the last train that would have carried me back to Katsura. Some frantic calls to Aya helped me figure out what my possibilities were for getting home. They were few unfortunately. There were only local trains heading back from Takarazuka so I couldn't get back to Umeda in time to catch the last JR train going all the way to Kyoto. The only options I had really were to either crash at a hotel in Osaka, crash at a fellow teacher's place, or take the last train heading north on JR and ride a taxi from Takatsuki which is a bit over halfway back to Katsura. I opted for the last option because I didn't feel like making someone clean up their apartment at 1am in order to accomidate me and staying at a hotel would probably cost me about as much as the taxi ride back to my place or more. So I jumped a JR train, arrived at Takatsuki at about 1:10am and asked a taxi diver to drive me to Katsura. He was pretty skeptical about giving a foreigner a ride that far. (Foreigners have a bad rep. for stiffing taxi drivers late at night). He held up eight fingers to make sure I knew just how much this was going to cost and I assured him in Japanese that I did and told him to hit the road and we did. I got back to my apartment at about 1:50am after managing to do a pretty good job of telling the driver how to get to my apartment.
I guess the whole situation worked out pretty well (aside of the fact that I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted to and I was out about 80 US dollars). Of course the big questions is, what does this have to do with my starting comment of barbecuing my unlucky streak?
Well, on New Year's morning Ayako and I went to a shrine and got our fortunes told.
Matsuo Shrine on New Year's Eve/Morning
Hers turned out to be great, but mine was a semi-bad one. I didn't give it much thought because Ayako said it wasn't really that bad and that it just said I should be careful. Well, I am starting to give that little slip of paper a bit more thought. The way to dispel/get rid of a bad fortune is to either burn it at a temple or tie it to a tree at a temple and thus let it rise off to the gods. I may just decide to give that a swing with the way things are going. I'll let you know in a future post whether I buried, burned it, or tied it to a tree. Rest assured though, I will be getting rid of it pretty soon. Here's hoping it changes my luck streak.
Posted: Fri - January 23, 2004 at 10:01 AM
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Published On: Jul 11, 2004 04:18 PM
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Published On: Jul 11, 2004 04:18 PM