NARITA TO YOKOHAMA VIA NXP, DIVERTING TEMPORARILY TO NATSUME SOKEI
Greg Merrell
Retired Sr Design Engineer/Project Manager at Teledyne Technologies Incorporated
NARITA TO YOKOHAMA VIA NXP, DIVERTING TEMPORARILY TO NATSUME SOKEI
Travel trouble sometimes is accompanied by serendipitous educational experiences, occurring partly by chance, and aided by newbie incompetence. The following relates such experience. I am not new to Japan Rail in general, but still susceptible to mistakes in different ticketing/gating requirements due to inexperience in those special situations and to jet-lag-induced brain fog. I suppose getting older doesn’t help.?
On a recent trip to Japan, I needed to travel from Narita to Yokohama to get to my hotel, with my significant other. I like trains, so NXP it was (Narita Express, to Tokyo and Yokohama, and other destinations). I bought the ticket with cash and showed my suica card (plastic tap card), and was given a small piece of paper. An hour later we were in the extremely busy but orderly (in the sense of everyone else knowing where they were going) Yokohama station. Since we purchased a special ticket, and took a special train, and based on some past experiences, I thought we could just exit to the street, being finished with our paper ticket. That was wrong, we needed to exit through a train fare-check gate, as is done for most trains and subways. We needed to insert the paper ticket into the gate fare-check, AND tap the suica card.
We asked for directions, and were told to go to the information booth. All we wanted to do was exit the station. Not comfortable with that, we saw a group of young students, and thought they could just simply point us to the exit. Seeing us having trouble, a young man, obviously Japanese but speaking perfect US English, came up to us to help. He took us through the process of exiting. He helped us insert our paper ticket, and tap the suica card, and add fare to the card. For a reason unknown to us, the suica card did not work, so we needed to add the fare (when purchased online it was to have had $20 fare already loaded). We had already paid the fare at the airport at the ticket desk in Narita (for the paper ticket). The young man was unable to explain it, but got us through, and needed to go back to his friends who were waiting for him.
Later, while schlepping through the streets with our bags in the rain, at night, on the way to the hotel, getting semi-lost following Google’s directions which do not advise of closed passageways and street crossings where one must descend by stairs to an underground passage without elevator, someone came up to us to ask if we needed help with our bags. Truly amazing, and safe there. We declined as we did not need that help then, only some time.
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During the addition of fare to the suica card, I had pulled out a 1000 yen note to put into the kiosk. The young man guiding us said “Oh, that’s valuable.”? The bill was unique, no longer in print. I put it away, and took out another, not unique one.? The valuable one had the cameo portrait of Natsume Soseki.
I researched Soseki later, and learned of his career and life in the early 20th century. He authored “I Am a Cat”, which I purchased and now read occasionally (long book), being a cat owner and fan. I purchased it at home on Amazon. Tried to find it in a couple of bookstores in Japan, one telling me it was out of stock, the other that they just wouldn’t have it.? It’s not the in vogue anime or Gojira Minus One type of thing. The book has social commentary for the environment of the time, in a fictional feline point of view, as imagined by the author.
Overall, the time of Soseki appears to be quite interesting, one of change, enlightenment and some social friction. One of a time of newly developed trade from afar. One that could quite possibly be viewed with skepticism by an enigmatic cat. One that saw the industrial development of a far eastern country without the legacy of the horror of WWII.
As for the 1000 yen bill, it sits at home.? I cannot use it. It has monetary and emotional value now, a household souvenir. It was acquired at an evidently unsuspecting currency exchange in Milpitas, California.