traveling lesson #416: trains, phones, and pop songs**

if you're out and about (and singing karaoke) in the suburbs at midnight on a thursday, don't automatically assume your train home will still be running. it may not be. in fact, you may be forced to take a roundabout way back to your hotel, which is fine except there aren't any express trains and the local hits thirty stops between where you are and where you want to be. qu'elle dommage. also, it's bad form to talk on your cell on the train, which is inconsequential because you won't get good reception in the middle of nowhere anyways. traveling lesson #417: if you decide to call your love while on the train (good manners be damned) and llamenting your train-based fate, you are guaranteed to pass through the middle of nowhere, thereby losing your cell signal. it's a karma thing.

addendum: if you attempt the roundabout way back to your hotel, don't assume that the train will make it as far as you expect. it may, in fact, go out of service at 1am, no matter where it's at. you may be stranded in god-knows-where with a taxi as your only means of getting sleep this night. actually, as I write this I'm banking on the trains at shinjuku station to be running back to shinagawa, where my hotel is. if not, this amusing little detour has already cost me $18 in taxi fare, and I doubt I'm even one-third of the way there.

"try to see it my way/
we can work it out."

partial taxi fare to shinjuku

update #3: so, as it turns out, ALL the trains in Tokyo stop running between midnight and 1am. hm...funny. except when you're MILES FROM WHERE ANYONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM. that said, my first taxi adventure cost a cool 3700 yen (divide by 115 to get dollars. it's too late and too depressing for me to do the math right now). that taxi took me to shinjuku, where I realized that tokyo is certainly not the city that never sleeps. in fact, it is the city with a curfew. i quickly pondered my options: (1) walk six miles back to my hotel (quickly discarded), (2) stay in a capsule hotel in shinjuku, which could be an interesting experience. well, at $40 a pop I decided I could scrounge enough cab fare to get me back to my own hotel.

and so will (hopefully) end this saga. lessons learned, experiences sought and acquired. wallet lightened considerably in return. I should be asleep by 2:30am, god willing. i think i have to get up at 7:30 for work tomorrow? does it really matter at this point?

**I wrote this last night, but for some reason didn't feel the urge to stay up long enough to post it then.