Hey yo. It’s been a while, heh heh.
Ok, let’s get down to business (insert Mulan sing-a-along).
This is kind of a recap, but not. Only slightly.
Classes and finals were over by the 16th (or maybe a few days earlier). I spent a lot of time with my friends who were only here for a semester, and I also spent a lot of time packing things to go away in storage at the seminar house and packing things to go with me on my trip to Tokyo and the Seoul, KOREA!!! I WAS VERY EXCITED FOR THIS TRIP (mostly just the Korea part), and you can tell by the use of capital letters.
The end of the semester could come no sooner, but then it was really hard to see all my friends leave and help them load their luggage onto the bus right outside Seminar House 4 and watch them go…go away…and go home and away from Japan and me and all of our memories… Alright, that was a bit too dramatic, but it did suck, but we still keep in touch via Facebook and tumblr and reminisce about our adventures and ridiculousness in the land of Osaka, Japan.
Then this weird lull happened as everyone was leaving and packing and leaving. I didn’t leave for Tokyo until the 23rd of December, so I was at Seminar House, at this dorm, a lot just chilling, watching Jarhead and episodes of Rome with some guy friends, dancing with girl friends, and spending A LOT of time on tumblr. I also had my boyfriend over a lot to waste time with on the internet. Then came lots of packing for me, and there was no one to see me off as most people had left. I wasn’t all sad or left wanting for crowds of people to wave me off because I was on my way to Tokyo and was more excited than anything by the time it was my turn to put a suitcase onto the bus.
Getting to Tokyo was a bundle of fun. Andrew, Andrea, and I lugged altogether 5 large suitcases across many train stations, escalators, staircases, and onto a couple of trains much to the dismay of the Japanese people who happened to encounter us. I won’t even begin to explain how much I’ve been over the fact that Japanese people will stare at you if you’re not Japanese and then how much more they will stare if you’re doing things out of the ordinary, like traveling with suitcases. It was really annoying…BUT there was a diamond in the rough.
Something really embarrassing happened to me on this journey from our starting point of Hirakata city, Osaka to Kyoto, where we would catch our 7- or 8-hour day bus to Tokyo. My friends and I lugged our suitcases up and down escalators and stairs and onto elevators. Thus, an accident was pretty much just waiting to happen. At one station, we got off the train and waited until the crowds finally got up the escalators for then us to get up without having time-crunched, grouchy people from the morning rush hour trying to beat us to the escalators since I knew they wouldn’t want to get stuck behind the slow-moving foreign tourists with tons of baggage. I mean, who does?
Anyways, as soon as it was clear, another train started to arrive. I urged my friends to move quickly before the train stopped and let off a new wave of passengers. We got to the escalator just in time for a ginormous crowd amassed at the bottom of the escalator. Andrea went first with her one suitcase and Andrew right after with his two. I came up at the rear, but when I placed one suitcase in front of me on a step and one behind, I didn’t place them each squarely on a step. The one behind me was only half on a step. I realized this and try to pull it closer to me. At the same time, what I didn’t realize was that the suitcase in front of me was in the middle of two steps, so when the flat part of the escalator became stairs, my attention was not on the correct bag to fix first. The top suitcase started to lean towards me and fall on me. I started to fall on top off the suitcase behind me, and then that one fell. It was a ridiculous domino effect. If you know me, then you know that I have absolutely no upper body strength nor significant muscle mass in my arms. I tried to push the suitcase on top of me off of me, but instead propelled myself backwards even more and I actually started to fall over and roll over the suitcase behind me. All of this was happening in a matter of seconds, by the way. And in these few seconds I could see Andrea’s concerned face that was also stifling a laugh and Andrew’s helpless look. I also realized that I was falling down the up escalator. Geez. I couldn’t believe it and kind of laughed at myself within the panic of falling and my arms and ankles getting bruised.
Surprisingly, a man who had just gotten off the train was right behind me and realized my predicament as it started to happen. The moment I started to fall over my other suitcase, he reached out to grab the extended handle of the suitcase in front of me to prevent it from falling over me as well. I was really surprised he came out to help me. I actually didn’t expect anyone to do anything but stare at me as I fell down the up escalator.
He really helped me because then I was able to steady myself, pull myself up onto a stair in between the suitcases, grab the higher one above me and put it onto a step. I thanked him and apologized profusely. Then I could pull the one behind me up, and then in a few seconds, I was up and off the escalator rushing to put the whole fiasco behind me. As soon as I had regained composure and stopped blushing, I laughed. Andrea asked me if I was ok, and I reassured that I was. I noticed that she was going to laugh at me earlier and told her so. She felt so bad and expressed that it was really funny, but she knew I was in big trouble there, and she couldn’t do anything since she was way ahead of me. I told her it was okay, and the three of us laughed it off as we went to exit the station and go to our next train transfer.
My goodness. Such a crazy pre-departure journey to Tokyo. And that man who helped me out, which was definitely a behavior out of the ordinary for Japan, he was the diamond in the rough. :)
