Semper Paratus

Perhaps it's because I was born and raised in temblor-prone San Francisco that I've never been awakened by even rather strong earthquakes. At least, I don't think I have; there have been a couple of times that a rather strong quake hit within minutes of my eyes opening in the morning, so maybe the earliest waves did wake me up. Either way, one of those times what jolted me from bleary pre-coffee semi-wakefulness to wide-awake fight-or-flight tense hyper awareness wasn't the shaking, it was the sound of something exploding in the next room. At least, that's what it sounded like to me. Getting up to investigate, I was puzzled by a layer of what looked like crushed ice covering several  square meters of the room's carpet, next to a refrigerator. 


The freezer door was closed, though, and I couldn't come up with a scenario that would dislodge and spray that much ice from a frost-free freezer, and close the door, regardless of any conceivable shaking pattern. I'm glad that I stood still and thought about it instead of rushing into the room: the "ice" was the disintegrated remains of what had been a large, heavy, lead crystal vase that had been on top of the fridge. I regret the loss of the vase, but it taught me a valuable lesson.


That sparkling carpet of crystal shards was between me and the apartment door. Escape from the building in the event of a really serious quake would not have been made easier by starting with a barefoot walk over broken glass--glass that I might not even have seen had it been midnight with the power out, rather than early morning. Now I don't put potentially dangerous things where they might be knocked down, and I know very well why it's a good idea to keep footwear with strong soles near the bed. However, I might still have that vase if I'd given earthquake preparedness the careful thought it deserves, a lot earlier. 


Some things one ought to do, such as keeping a flashlight near your bed or trying to situate the bed away from windows that might break in a quake (or in a typhoon, for that matter), are pretty obvious, and may not require much effort. Securing furniture so that it's less likely to topple or disgorge contents (crockery, for example, or your wine or whiskey collection), may involve more trouble and expense but is nonetheless worth it for the damage you can avoid to yourself and your property. Wedges to place under the front edges of wardrobes and bookcases, or hardware to secure them to walls, are inexpensive and easily available at do-it-yourself shops or hardware stores. This is particularly important if you're unable to situate such furniture away from where it might fall on you...small rooms limit the placement options, but "crushed by a chest of drawers" isn't what I'd want for an epitaph.


Computers, TVs, and other items of electronic equipment are certainly expensive enough to justify the rather small investment in time and money required to prevent them from being knocked off your desk or racks (and don't forget to secure the racks, too).  Speaking of computers, if an earthquake strong enough to damage the hardware despite your precautions hits, it's probably not going to do the data on your hard drives much good, either; you should consider backing up and saving really important data somewhere else entirely, whether in a different physical location, or in the "cloud" somewhere.


Since everyone's situation is different, I'm not going into any further detail about securing possessions. The important thing is to take a few minutes, look around at your home (and at your workplace, if you have any say in what can be done there), imagine what might happen if it all were given a thorough shaking, and decide what you can do to make it safer for you and for your stuff. There's a lot of information on the 'net if you want detailed advice.


As we have seen too many times in the last few years, Japan is prone to earthquakes that are really destructive, enough to wreck buildings  and infrastructure, and rearrange large swathes of landscape, causing many deaths and injuries and displacing thousands. Predicting them isn't practical and may never be, and a few seconds' advance warning--if that--is about the best that can be hoped for in the foreseeable future. There are some good sites around the 'net with advice on what to do before, during, and immediately after an earthquake, and if you have any doubt at all--or even if you don't--you should go read them, and then hold practice drills, particularly if you have a family. A small sample includes one from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, one from the US Embassy in Tokyo, one from FEMA in the US, and one that's part of a very good overall disaster preparedness site from the Provincial Emergency Program site of British Columbia, Canada.


Those of you who work away from home should also consider what you'll do when a quake strikes while you're at work, or on the way to or from your workplace. I started writing this post last night, but by coincidence this morning's Japan Times Online ran an article about a newly discovered 200-km-long active fault off the Kii Peninsula, a story that for some reason had an additional piece appended to it about what people working in Tokyo during the 3/11 quake did about getting home. It says, in part:

Some 34 percent of people walked home from their workplaces or schools in Tokyo's 23 wards after the March 11 earthquake without waiting for train and other public transportation services to resume, a survey by the Railway Technical Research Institute showed Saturday.


For those who walked, it took an average three hours and nine minutes to get home, excluding time for breaks, the survey said They walked an average distance of 13.4 km, with 11 respondents walking more than 30 km.

Only 5 percent of those surveyed "went to accommodation facilities or stayed  with acquaintances", but the earthquake struck in early afternoon on a Friday. Had it not been the beginning of a weekend, I'd bet that many more would have stayed in their offices. I heard of one unfortunate individual who attempted a long walk home from near Tokyo Station to somewhere in western Tokyo but dropped dead along the way, probably the victim of a heart attack. Less tragic anecdotes from the time indicate that many people lacked clear knowledge about the walking route home, and few were well prepared for a hike of more than 10 km, much less 30+. 



That's a long walk in high heels, for example, or even in men's business shoes, and relying on convenience stores being open and still stocked with water or food along the way was a chancy thing. Planning for such a walk home when the next train-stopping quake hits might be a good idea, and keeping a manageably small but thoughtfully stocked disaster kit at your workplace certainly is, along with a pair of comfortable and sturdy shoes.  A wise commuter would habitually keep at least a small bottle of water, a bar or two of emergency food, and one of those emergency blankets that fold up smaller than a pocket tissue packet, in their purse, briefcase, day-pack, or whatever, in case the quake hits while in transit.


Easily portable disaster kits for the home and car, along with less portable but potentially useful gear and supplies for what may be a long wait until necessities become available, should be planned, purchased, and stored where they will be easily accessible both for post-disaster use and for regular checking and replacement/replenishment. Dead batteries or spoiled food aren't going to do you much good, after all.


There are plenty of sources for advice on what to include in disaster kits, including those sites above. Some sites concentrating on survival may at first strike you as a bit extreme, but I encourage you to at least skim through anything that you find that looks even remotely useful: you can find some gems in unlikely-seeming places, including instructive first-hand accounts like these (read the entries by "Joe" and by "Expat D" from last March and April, for example). 


There are also lots of sources on the 'net for emergency gear and supplies (some military surplus gear, by the way, can be ideal). You may find that ordering online gets you better quality, more variety, and lower prices than shopping at the neighborhood DYI store's "disaster goods" corner. You may also find that things like canned tuna (I'd get oil-packed, myself, because the oil's usable for cooking other things) or corned beef (which might be too salty if your water supply is too limited, but tastes good as is) can be bought on sale at the local supermarket and may be much more palatable than typical emergency food. I wouldn't be happy on a kanpan (Japanese hardtack) diet for long.


If you're in the Tokyo area, you can find shops that sell  inexpensive--by Tokyo standards--imported canned and bottled food in relatively large containers that are likely to be cheaper than what you can find in your neighborhood supermarket, and maybe tastier, too. A kilo of ground coffee for under 1000 yen, for example, or Spam for 300-odd yen or sometimes less. The Kaldi Coffee Farm chain shops scattered around town, or Kishi Photo in Togoshi Ginza spring to mind. I gather that Costco would probably be a good source, but none of their stores are convenient enough for me to have visited them. The Flying Pig is an option, too, for some things, but they're not exactly cheap; they are convenient, however. The Meat Guy is a great source for meat, cheese, and the like, which isn't what you'd think of as very suitable for emergency food if your power is out, but he offers some very good canned, bottled, and dehydrated food as well, and runs his operation very pleasantly and professionally.


Dehydrated food has the advantage of being light and easy to store for a relatively long time. You can find some pretty fancy and tasty items, including more-or-less complete meals, many intended for campers and hikers, some specifically selected and packaged for emergencies, but keep in mind that water may be in short supply for at least the first few days after a sufficiently severe disaster. You may have to look around a bit to find an online supplier that will ship to Japan, however. One of the well-known suppliers is Mountain House, but they don't ship to Japan and appear to offer only a sadly limited range of products through their local agent. Cabela's, however, does ship to Japan, evidently including some Mountain House products. It's worth doing a little research while you plan how you'd survive in relative comfort for up to a week or two without shops, power, or running water.


If you're much of a hiker or camper, you may already own some gear that would serve you well in the days after a major disaster; try checking and updating it, maybe relocating it if necessary to have it immediately available: the tent and sleeping bag in the back of your closet under the collapsed roof won't help you much. You might want to add water purification tablets/gear if you don't already have them, and if you really want to get fancy, you might consider something like this.


In any case, the time to get your act together is before, not after, the next disaster. Please give some serious thought to what you have, and what you might need. Plan carefully, and then act on the plan. I personally think that anyone in the Tokyo area who survives when a really big earthquake strikes had best prepare for at least a week--probably more like two--of living very rough, and a lot of discomfort after that.


 If you own motor vehicles, by the way, I strongly advise keeping the fuel topped up all the time. It took a long time for fuel supplies to become available after 3/11, and it could take much longer depending on when and how the next disaster hits. Expressways and main roads are likely to be impassable--even if intact--for a while, but you might find that you have to rely on your own wheels as an ambulance, or to get to where you can acquire, say, firewood or water.


This has been very Tokyo-centered, because I live more or less in the Tokyo area and because I believe that a big quake hitting Tokyo is likely to foul up rescue and recovery efforts much more than it would in most other areas. Being always prepared, as the title of this post suggests, is a good idea regardless of where you live, and that's true whether you're more likely to encounter earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes or floods, or whatever other slings and arrows Nature might send your way. 

The Chance of a Roll

The Tokyo area infrastructure, particularly public and private transportation, doesn't hold up very well under stress. Typhoons that pass over too closely; the increasingly common localized, violent "guerrilla rains"; or even a few centimeters of snow are likely to cause disruption, and often the degree of disruption seems disproportionate to the cause. The number of people living and working in a relatively small area, and the distances that many of them have to commute--I've seen averages figures of 26 km and 68 minutes claimed for people working in Metropolitan Tokyo--contribute greatly to this, as do many other factors including road conditions and the layout of the city. Even a single slightly delayed train, along with a certain amount of ripple effect, can inconvenience a lot of people if it's anywhere around rush hour, for example, and if the delay demands switching passengers to buses, the already chronically congested streets don't make things any smoother.

Yesterday's first snowfall of the season was the heaviest in six years, but it only amounted to between two and six centimeters around Tokyo and caused fewer train delays than I've seen in the past. Nevertheless, there were at least 53 people taken to hospitals with snow-related injuries (mostly pedestrians who slipped and fell), 393 traffic accidents in Tokyo, and well over 1000 traffic accidents if the immediate surrounding area is included. There almost certainly would have been more trouble if the snow had started falling more heavily and earlier: many people seem to have managed to start for home in time to avoid getting stuck, and much of the snow fell after the commuters and their trains, buses, and cars were mostly done for the day.

Earthquakes, being destructive as well as obstructive,  obviously can be even more disruptive, as those of us who have lived here for awhile already thought we knew, before last March's catastrophe demonstrated to us just how much nature can interfere with civilization. I think it's safe to say that most Tokyo or Southern Kanto dwellers tended to think of Tohoku as being pretty far away, even while being intellectually aware that Sendai is only two hours from Tokyo by Shinkansen. The direct, and indirect--and continuing--effects of the 3/11 disaster have disabused us of that notion.

Now a team of University of Tokyo researchers has published a report saying that a Magnitude 7 earthquake (I believe that's roughly comparable to the 1906 or 1989 earthquakes that struck my home town of San Francisco) has a 70% chance of striking Tokyo within the next four years. The Japanese government's previous claim has been a 70% chance within 30 years. Earthquake prediction, even when old records are considered more carefully and less skeptically than they had been, is a very inexact science. It's also not the only branch of science that doesn't really lend itself well to speaking of percentage chances over time...likelihood can be a tricky thing to quantify. Still, the Meteorological Agency reports that an average of 1.48 earthquakes per day ranging from Magnitude 3 to 6 have occurred in and near Tokyo since last March's quake, roughly five times as many as before it. The increased seismic activity is thought by at least some researchers to increase the likelihood of a big quake striking Tokyo, sooner than was previously expected.

Depending on the time of day, on wind velocity, and on the season, the casualties and damage that would be caused by a Magnitude 7 quake hitting near Tokyo would be huge. Even pretty conservative estimates suggest between 7,000 and 12,000 deaths, 6.5 million people unable to return home, and something between a half and 1.5 million buildings destroyed completely by earthquake, liquefaction, and fire combined. It doesn't require too much imagination to see how the disruption of Japan's highly centralized national government and financial/adminstrative/communications center would affect rescue services and the logistics of getting essential services back up.

Personally, I would want to be neither in one of the deeper subways nor in a high-rise condominium or office when a quake of that magnitude or larger strikes Tokyo.  Both are likely to be fairly quake-resistant (at least the newer ones), but neither offer very attractive options for getting to any other relatively safe place with food and water available in the short term. I concede that either might be safer than, for example, being caught riding my motorcycle under the expressway or a railway trestle, but I think I'd prefer the probably illusory feeling of freedom that being at ground level with my own vehicle would give me.

I'm also well aware that a 70% chance of a massive quake within the next 30 years or within the next four means that it could be tomorrow either way. That's not a thought that anyone wants to dwell on very much, including me. That shouldn't prevent us from doing what we can to prepare as much as is practical for the eventuality, however. Next time, I'll go into some of my thoughts on that.

Yielding Place to New

I wish all of you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous Year of the Dragon! Oriental dragons are very different from their Western counterparts, bringing good fortune, and I hope that we all experience a lot more good fortune and a lot less misfortune than we did last year.

The Dragon's creative, unconventional, flexible, confident, courageous nature, disdaining conformity and constraint, may be just the set  of characteristics that is needed in the coming year...in Japan and in much of the rest of the world social, political  and financial problems have mostly been worsened by traditional approaches. New and better ideas and actions are called for, and I hope to see many successful ones.

I hope that the coming year turns out to be a far better one for each of you, for all of your loved ones, and for me and mine, too.

Happy New Year! I hope it will be a great one!

The Old Order Changeth

The end of a year inevitably involves various  lists, as we look back over what took place and what that means for us and for our future. The best or worst movies, books, games, or whatever are proposed by critics or by fans, and the best--but especially the worst--news events are reviewed by the media.

2011 brought more than usually frequent and severe disasters, with the combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant catastrophe naturally being the closest to home in my case, not least because its effects are continuing and will be for a long time to come.

That closely followed the devastation in Christchurch, New Zealand, and was followed itself by hundreds of tornadoes in the United States, among them the one that wrecked Joplin, Missouri. Hurricane Irene wasn't as bad as it had been predicted to be, but it was bad enough to leave three million homes without power, and a repair bill in the billions of dollars. Then there were torrential rains and flooding around the world, with Thailand making the news in Japan especially, mostly because of the effect on Japanese manufacturing interests there. Both  flooding and drought plagued Africa, and floods in the Philippines wrought enormous destruction. Turkey, too, had a severe and deadly earthquake. That's not anywhere near an exhaustive list.

The casualty figures are mind-numbing, and it's unfortunately easy to lose sight of the fact that each among the many thousand lives lost was an individual, often with friends and family left behind, and with things left undone and dreams unrealized.

Then there were people whose lives were cut short by illness or accident, rather than by natural disaster.

There are lists of those celebrities who died during 2011, such as this  one, and even videos, such as this   one.


Among those individuals who passed away this year was Christopher Hitchens, a philosopher many--but not all--of whose opinions and attitudes toward life were much like my own. I strongly disagreed with him about champagne and lobster being among the "four most overrated things in life", for example, but strongly agreed with "cheap booze is a false economy", as well as with many of his views about politics, religion, and much else. I've always appreciated intelligent, witty iconoclasts; he was one of the best of them, and an articulate hedonist, as well.

As I get older, seeing these lists every year is just a little scary in the cases where I've outlived someone who passed away other than accidentally. I was 45 when Jerry Garcia died at 53 in 1995, for example, but Steve Jobs was five years younger than I am.

For me personally this hasn't really been a great year. I'm in good health (against all odds), what property I have is intact, and I don't seem to be in any immediate danger of setting off Geiger counters when I walk by them. On the other hand, the extra year of work I managed to negotiate  my erstwhile employer into (grudgingly) granting me ran out last spring after an unexpectedly early retirement, and I'm still without a steady job. That's one of the things that I'm hoping to rectify in the coming year, and the sooner, the better.

Here's hoping that the coming year is much better for all of you, and for me, too.

Happy Boxing Day!

Happy Boxing Day to those (including my friends here in Japan) for whom it's December 26th when you see this. Merry Christmas to my friends and relatives for whom it's still December 25th. If any of my readers celebrate some other holiday around today, I wish you a happy holiday of your choice.

Boxing Day is an official national/public holiday--what some call a banking holiday because the banks are closed--in several countries, mostly the Commonwealth countries. The origin of the name is not enitrely clear; there are several theories that can be found with a bit of online research.

As Saint Stephen's Day it's celebrated as a public holiday in numerous countries as diverse as Austria, Catalonia, Germany, and Poland. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the day on December 27th, and their use of the Julian Calendar puts the day on January 9th of the Gregorian Calendar, which can be a little confusing, I suppose, but not really any more so than the Asian observation of New Year on different days depending on whether one uses the Grgorian or Lunar Calendar.

St. Stephen was the first Christian martyr, and it's from him that I get the second of my two middle names, although it's spelled "Steven", with a "v" instead of a "ph", on my birth certificate. For the several people in my past who had believed me when I told them that my middle initials stand for "Extra Special", I have to confess that I was kidding: sadly, it's the much more prosaic "Edward Steven".

This seemed like a good day to resume posting on my blog. Among other things, I'll go into the reasons for the hiatus in a longish post at the end of the year. For now, I'm just letting you know that I'm back, and wishing you a Happy Boxing Day, and happy holidays of whatever sort you prefer. Cheers!

Sakura and Masks

As of today, it has been a month since the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and as I write this my study is being shaken by a succession of shocks severe enough to make me look very warily at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves surrounding me. The preliminary news reports are saying that it's a Magnitude 7.1 quake, 6-lower on the Japanese shindo scale, centered off Fukushima Prefecture, and that there are tsunami warnings and cautions in effect along the Tohoku and Kanto coasts. Under more normal circumstances, that would be a significant earthquake;  now it's "merely" another in a long series of aftershocks.

A couple of hours ago, there was a brief but intense thunderstorm, also sudden after a mild, sunny day. That's more common here in the summer, but not unheard of in the spring; in retrospect it seems as if it was a loud herald for yet another demonstration of Nature's violent side.

I haven't written about the multiple disasters that struck Japan since my post last month on dealing with the immediate post-quake transportation problems. I haven't really felt as if I had anything worthy of adding to the many opinions and descriptions and discussions, at least not at this still rather early stage. I will probably have something to say later, when more accurate information is available for all of the affected areas and their inhabitants.

Just before the aftershocks began today, though, I was reminded that it was 41 years ago today that I arrived in Japan. That day also started off sunny and mild, but there were showers later in the day then, too. The cherry blossoms had bloomed somewhat earlier that year than this, but there were still plenty of them on the trees, along with petals dancing in the wind or swirling in rivulets of rain on the streets. As I rode in a van from where I'd landed at Yokota Air Base to my new duty station at Yokosuka Naval Base, my attention was certainly caught by the sakura, but it was also caught by all of the masks I saw.

At the time, I had never seen anyone wearing a surgical mask outside of a hospital. As we drove through what was probably Yokohama, right around rush hour, it seemed as if at least one of every 10 people we passed were wearing masks. It was inconceivable that so many doctors and nurses had forgotten to remove their masks before starting for home, or even that such a high percentage of the passersby could be medical personnel.

After a moment's consideration of whether I might be hallucinating, I asked our driver, another sailor but one who had at least been here long enough to be able to drive skillfully through Japanese traffic. At first, he didn't understand the question; I immediately revised upward my estimate of how long he'd been here.

"Oh, yeah...the masks. They wear them when they have colds, or hay fever, or when they figure that others might. I guess you could say it's a combination of caution and consideration. Avoid catching something, or avoid passing something on to others. You'll get used to it."

And of course I did. I hardly noticed the masks anymore after a few months, just as I hardly noticed the occasional mild earthquake--having been born and raised in quake-prone San Francisco helped with that. I've been seeing more masks than usual lately, but regardless of what some of the more sensational--and irresponsible--journalists have been saying, that's much more because of the very high levels of pollen in the air this season than because of any fear of wind-borne radioactive contaminants, at least for most people in the Tokyo area.

The sakura blossoms are admired for their ephemeral beauty, but also because they return, brilliant and lovely, each spring. The sakura fubuki--cherry blossom blizzards--of petals blown from the branches are sad but beautiful, yet carry a promise of next year's glory. The masks that so many people wear are a sign of temporary discomfort, even misery, but they, too, are impermanent.

Beauty, and health, and happiness will return, to the sakura, to the people, and to the country; recovery will take time and effort, but it will happen, and probably faster than expected.

Long Train Runnin'

After Friday's catastrophic earthquake--the Japan Meteorological Agency has announced that it was Magnitude 9.0--and tsunami, rail transportation in the Tokyo area  completely shut down, stranding what was probably well over a million commuters. Many stayed in their offices, with friends,  or in ad hoc shelters set up in hotels or public halls. Hotels were quickly filled, and many people decided to give up on the long lines for taxis and buses, especially after hearing media reports of closed or gridlocked roads, electing to walk home even though it was a journey of tens of kilometers. Some of the more enterprising bought or rented bicycles. Most watched and listened eagerly for news of the resumption of train service, among them thousands waiting in and around stations.

Saturday morning's announcements of the piecemeal return of one line after another triggered a rush on the stations that opened, notably those on the circle-route Yamanote Line. I was about to embark on what promised to be an arduous journey by motorcycle to Kumagaya, 60 kilometers away on a map but 70-odd by road depending on the route. The combination of dismal news about closed expressways and somewhat more optimistic notices of returning train service changed my mind, so I took a cab to Shinagawa Station.

A horde of people, mostly tired-looking office workers  it seemed, stood or shuffled at ground level, hundreds queuing for buses or cabs intermingled with more hundreds edging slowly toward the stairs up to the concourse and wickets on the floor above. The escalators were turned off, probably wisely given the size of the crowd and the potential for a dangerous domino-like mass toppling. I was impressed by the stolid, steady, stoic behavior of nearly everyone, pressed together and moving at a glacial pace, considerate of their companions in adversity and obedient of the station employees' directions...I was to see much more of that for the next half day.

I remembered a little used and rather obscurely placed elevator  tucked behind a couple of shops in the station, and so managed to avoid the long wait to climb the stairs. The automatic wickets were disabled, left open presumably to facilitate entry and thus avoid bottlenecks and maybe injuries from the sheer press of people. I took a swipe at the sensor with my Suica card just in case, but it was indeed free to enter. The Shinagawa concourse, both inside and outside of the wickets, is spacious. Even with the steady stream of people entering, it seemed less crowded than during normal rush hours; the platform was a different story altogether.

There wasn't space for more people on the platform--indeed some people were waiting on the stairs leading down to it--but the crowd waiting patiently for the next train was arranged in neat rows and lines at the spots marked for the train doors. When I arrived, only the counter-clockwise route had been started, and that only just, but there was a train at the other side of the platform waiting for the start of service in that direction, and people waiting patiently inside those cars and in line for the next train, too. Most had expressions of relief at having made it this far, and there was an overall air of gaman.

The first train to arrive was probably among the first two or three of the day, with predictably few people getting off (I assume it had started from Ōsaki ). They had to thread their way through the ranks of the waiting crowd, but there was remarkably little pushing and shoving other than unavoidable jostling due to the sheer number of people. Although much more crowded than an ordinary rush hour, it was considerably less hectic and frenzied; I presume that everybody was just pleased to have a train to board, and nobody had any unrealistic expectations of a speedy journey.

That train was filled and pulled out, and I was now close enough to have a reasonable expectation of getting on the next one. During weekday rush hours, there's a Yamanote Line train every couple of minutes, barring unforeseen accidents, but it was closer to a half hour when the next arrived. In the meantime, periodic announcements were made explaining that the previous train was moving slowly, checking the condition of the tracks as it went, and the subsequent train would proceed accordingly. These announcements continued after I squeezed onto the next train, all the way to Ueno Station, a trip that took something like three times longer than usual due to the slow deliberate pace. The car I was in had one of the fancy LCDs mounted above the door, providing more-than-usually-important information about which lines or sections thereof were running, delayed, or still stopped. At least one of the announcements turned out to be false: it incorrectly indicated a shinkansen line had resumed, unless I was hallucinating--but I had decided to take the longer, slower Takasaki Line...if the train stopped along the way, I thought I had better options for walking to the next station on that.

When we finally reached Ueno Station, the electric signboards were of no help at all; evidently the schedules were so utterly fouled up that it was pointless to even attempt displays. I can see the point, but it would have been useful to know which lines were using which platforms, for the lines (like the Takasaki and Utsunomiya Lines, for example) that sometimes--but not always--share platforms. This bred confusion and the attendant anxiety about maybe standing for over an hour in a line for the wrong train. Further confusion was caused by some station employees' having incorrect (or at least obsolete) information, and by the continual cacophony of announcements--loud and often unclear--from multiple platforms competing for attention. It didn't help that trains all seemed to have "Ueno" as their destinations until moments before they pulled out of the station, so one couldn't judge merely by looking.

I could have...probably, barely...crammed myself into a Takasaki Line train  that left about noon. I decided to wait for the next train, on which I was able to get a seat. It left at 12:50, and finally arrived around 15:00, taking about twice the time it usually requires for the run. I had to wait in line for an additional 20 minutes or so to pay my fare, since the initial wicket in Shinagawa didn't record my entry. They took my word for where I'd entered, and I imagine they would have done so pretty much regardless of where I'd said, within reason.

It was a long, often uncomfortable, day. In retrospect, I think that I made the right decision in choosing the train system over the motorcycle, though. Having since heard of people taking 16 hours to drive 16 kilometers (I can stagger that fast), even though I'd expect somewhat better time on the bike it would probably have been a lot slower and probably even less comfortable.

And I might have had to title this post "Midnight Rider".