Monday, January 26, 2009
Wasted Wish
Of all the things I could have wished for this morning, why the hell did I choose snow?
This morning started out pretty typically: I woke up grumbling at the sound of my alarm clock, spent five or ten minutes shivering while trying to warm myself in front of the gas heater, then I prepared and ate my breakfast before checking my e-mail, Twitter and the latest stuff on Google Reader. I was quite surprised when I saw this post on Chad's blog and saw that it had snowed in Nagasaki. Not just snow, but snow with a decent amount of accumulation. Midway through his first winter here, Chad had somehow seen more snow at his home than I had seen in two winters here. This is even more annoying when you consider that Chad lives much further south than me in an area where snow is considered unusual. The whole thing felt wrong to me and I told Chad as much in a comment.
It wasn't more than fifteen minutes later when Mako told me that it was snowing outside - snowing quite a bit in fact. I cheered up in a hurry and bundled up, even grabbing my oh-so-snug Russian winter hat before heading out the door. After a gray and wet haze hung over our area last week, this morning seemed to be the perfect antidote. Sure, it was still cold, but I didn't need an umbrella to walk in the snow. If anything I walked even slower so I could catch a few flakes on my tongue and marvel at the thin white coating on my neighborhood.
Once I got off the train and walked to the bus stop, I suddenly realized that I was an idiot. The streets around the station were sloppy with snow and slush and all the vehicles were moving extremely slowly. In fact, the bus wasn't even in position yet because it had only just arrived at the station (putting it about seven minutes late) and was still dropping off passengers. My excitement for winter and snow had obscured the fact that I had to ride the bus into the rural northern reaches of Osaka to get to work and buses are notoriously unreliable in this weather that I had implicitly wished for.
The bus may have arrived late to the station but we left on time and had little trouble making our way out of the city and onto the narrow road that leads to Hana Town. I relaxed as we made good time as the snow seemed to offer little resistance. I started thinking ahead to lunchtime and recess and the possibility of playing with the students in the snow, an easy way to get closer to the kids at a school where I am not as accepted as I would like to be. For a little while, my wish for snow became a good idea again.
Around that time was when the bus stopped. Not abruptly or screechingly, but it stopped just as we were entering a tunnel. Being well-outside the city limits and any traffic signals, the stop got my attention. I leaned into the aisle to look out the front windows and I saw a row of brake lights tailing away into the darkness ahead. Whatever was happening, we were stopped and so was every other car visible to us. There was no shoulder, no cross-streets, not even room to turn around. We were stopped and we would stay that way until we could go again, nothing more.
I doubt it took me more than five minutes to realize that there was no possible way I was going to arrive at work on time. Today's school is one of the more remote ones and I must ride the bus past two of the other, larger schools in order to reach it. I debated with myself whom to contact and what to tell them - all the while considering what Japanese vocabulary I needed and how polite I should attempt to word my excuse - when a painfully obviously problem actually became obvious to me: I was stuck in a tunnel heading out into the sticks so my mobile phone had no signal at all.
The idea that I would be both late for work and unavailable for contact made me more than a little nervous. I knew the road ahead well and while it wasn't one solid tunnel all the way up to Hana Town, I knew it was a small road without much on it besides tunnels and bridges and something that looked like a lumber yard. Not knowing any alternatives, I typed a message into my phone and just waited, hoping that we might manage to creep forward out of the tunnel allowing to transmit the bad news.
We did start moving at some point, but it wasn't very fast or very far. As we approached the end of the tunnel, I revised my apology/explanation e-mail to incorporate the fact that I was already late, rather than just going to be late if the bus didn't pick up speed. As we emerged from the tunnel I looked at my signal indicator. No change. We edged forward and I kept looking, but nothing happened. We were outside but still too far from society to pick up anything. As we nudged forward and into a second tunnel, I started to get much more nervous. It wouldn't be long before first period started and no one at school had any idea where I was or why I wasn't already there. Sending an e-mail to explain what happened struck me as so futile it bordered on insulting, no matter how flowery I managed to write it.
Sometime after we left that tunnel, I finally managed to send out my message while we stood motionless on a tiny bridge. I knew this sort of thing wasn't a fireable offense but that didn't stop my brain from making illogical leap after illogical leap. Now I wasn't just nervous about being late, I was nervous about not reaching school at all. I wasn't even in Hana Town yet and the weather was clearly a problem. What hopes did I have to make it over the hills to reach my relatively remote destination? Taking things to an even greater (and crazier) extreme, I started to wonder what would happen if the bus ran out of gas. We seemed to be stuck in an area with zero options for fuel or detours, so how many hours would the bus be able to keep the engine running? Would we have to shut it down periodically to conserve fuel?
Around the time I managed to send this message to Twitter, I caught a glimpse of the problem that lay ahead. In the middle of a narrow bridge, out here between two tunnels, there was some kind of accident or obstruction. The traffic snarl was not directly weather-related as I had been assuming, it was instead a result of some other misfortune which may or may not have been caused by the snow. When we finally got close enough to maneuver around the stoppage, I saw a single car in our lane facing the wrong way with its front left end torn open. There were no signs of any passengers or emergency vehicles. I'll never find out what exactly happened but the lack of a second car at the scene suggests the driver crashed on his own due to the slick conditions.
Once we made it past that point, things went pretty smoothly. The snowfall had almost stopped and the roads were reasonably clear. We had to stop once more when a truck ahead of us suddenly decided he wasn't going to Hana Town anymore so he turned around at the first opportunity, delaying everyone behind him by another four minutes or so. At this point I was already a full half-hour late with a fair amount of distance to go so I was less angry than I was exhausted. I remember looking him in the eye as he passed us going the other way and thinking "Really, asshole? What are you, a quitter?"
I ended up arriving at school almost exactly one hour late. When I entered the office and started apologizing (rule number one in Japan: always apologize no matter what), they made it clear they understood. As it turns out, I didn't have any classes that first period anyway and I had managed to arrive just in time to teach my second period lesson, which I did. Unfortunately, the snow didn't last until lunchtime so my I never got the chance to have any winter fun. All I got was winter aggravation.
It would seem that as far as my job was concerned, it was as if nothing had happened. Certainly that's what all the evidence seems to suggest, but much like that single car accident I'll never know for sure. It is entirely possible that I have, in fact, violated some unspoken rule and they will never trust me again, nor will they ever discuss what happened with me while quietly disapproving of my actions to all the other teachers in Hana Town. This being Japan, I wish I could tell you that was just crazy talk.
Angryface Postscript: When I got home, I got a response from the teacher I was e-mailing this morning to explain that I was late. He didn't check his mail until after work was finished, which means everyone at work was left wondering where the hell I was. Thanks a lot!
This morning started out pretty typically: I woke up grumbling at the sound of my alarm clock, spent five or ten minutes shivering while trying to warm myself in front of the gas heater, then I prepared and ate my breakfast before checking my e-mail, Twitter and the latest stuff on Google Reader. I was quite surprised when I saw this post on Chad's blog and saw that it had snowed in Nagasaki. Not just snow, but snow with a decent amount of accumulation. Midway through his first winter here, Chad had somehow seen more snow at his home than I had seen in two winters here. This is even more annoying when you consider that Chad lives much further south than me in an area where snow is considered unusual. The whole thing felt wrong to me and I told Chad as much in a comment.
It wasn't more than fifteen minutes later when Mako told me that it was snowing outside - snowing quite a bit in fact. I cheered up in a hurry and bundled up, even grabbing my oh-so-snug Russian winter hat before heading out the door. After a gray and wet haze hung over our area last week, this morning seemed to be the perfect antidote. Sure, it was still cold, but I didn't need an umbrella to walk in the snow. If anything I walked even slower so I could catch a few flakes on my tongue and marvel at the thin white coating on my neighborhood.
Once I got off the train and walked to the bus stop, I suddenly realized that I was an idiot. The streets around the station were sloppy with snow and slush and all the vehicles were moving extremely slowly. In fact, the bus wasn't even in position yet because it had only just arrived at the station (putting it about seven minutes late) and was still dropping off passengers. My excitement for winter and snow had obscured the fact that I had to ride the bus into the rural northern reaches of Osaka to get to work and buses are notoriously unreliable in this weather that I had implicitly wished for.
The bus may have arrived late to the station but we left on time and had little trouble making our way out of the city and onto the narrow road that leads to Hana Town. I relaxed as we made good time as the snow seemed to offer little resistance. I started thinking ahead to lunchtime and recess and the possibility of playing with the students in the snow, an easy way to get closer to the kids at a school where I am not as accepted as I would like to be. For a little while, my wish for snow became a good idea again.
Around that time was when the bus stopped. Not abruptly or screechingly, but it stopped just as we were entering a tunnel. Being well-outside the city limits and any traffic signals, the stop got my attention. I leaned into the aisle to look out the front windows and I saw a row of brake lights tailing away into the darkness ahead. Whatever was happening, we were stopped and so was every other car visible to us. There was no shoulder, no cross-streets, not even room to turn around. We were stopped and we would stay that way until we could go again, nothing more.
I doubt it took me more than five minutes to realize that there was no possible way I was going to arrive at work on time. Today's school is one of the more remote ones and I must ride the bus past two of the other, larger schools in order to reach it. I debated with myself whom to contact and what to tell them - all the while considering what Japanese vocabulary I needed and how polite I should attempt to word my excuse - when a painfully obviously problem actually became obvious to me: I was stuck in a tunnel heading out into the sticks so my mobile phone had no signal at all.
The idea that I would be both late for work and unavailable for contact made me more than a little nervous. I knew the road ahead well and while it wasn't one solid tunnel all the way up to Hana Town, I knew it was a small road without much on it besides tunnels and bridges and something that looked like a lumber yard. Not knowing any alternatives, I typed a message into my phone and just waited, hoping that we might manage to creep forward out of the tunnel allowing to transmit the bad news.
We did start moving at some point, but it wasn't very fast or very far. As we approached the end of the tunnel, I revised my apology/explanation e-mail to incorporate the fact that I was already late, rather than just going to be late if the bus didn't pick up speed. As we emerged from the tunnel I looked at my signal indicator. No change. We edged forward and I kept looking, but nothing happened. We were outside but still too far from society to pick up anything. As we nudged forward and into a second tunnel, I started to get much more nervous. It wouldn't be long before first period started and no one at school had any idea where I was or why I wasn't already there. Sending an e-mail to explain what happened struck me as so futile it bordered on insulting, no matter how flowery I managed to write it.
Sometime after we left that tunnel, I finally managed to send out my message while we stood motionless on a tiny bridge. I knew this sort of thing wasn't a fireable offense but that didn't stop my brain from making illogical leap after illogical leap. Now I wasn't just nervous about being late, I was nervous about not reaching school at all. I wasn't even in Hana Town yet and the weather was clearly a problem. What hopes did I have to make it over the hills to reach my relatively remote destination? Taking things to an even greater (and crazier) extreme, I started to wonder what would happen if the bus ran out of gas. We seemed to be stuck in an area with zero options for fuel or detours, so how many hours would the bus be able to keep the engine running? Would we have to shut it down periodically to conserve fuel?
Around the time I managed to send this message to Twitter, I caught a glimpse of the problem that lay ahead. In the middle of a narrow bridge, out here between two tunnels, there was some kind of accident or obstruction. The traffic snarl was not directly weather-related as I had been assuming, it was instead a result of some other misfortune which may or may not have been caused by the snow. When we finally got close enough to maneuver around the stoppage, I saw a single car in our lane facing the wrong way with its front left end torn open. There were no signs of any passengers or emergency vehicles. I'll never find out what exactly happened but the lack of a second car at the scene suggests the driver crashed on his own due to the slick conditions.
Once we made it past that point, things went pretty smoothly. The snowfall had almost stopped and the roads were reasonably clear. We had to stop once more when a truck ahead of us suddenly decided he wasn't going to Hana Town anymore so he turned around at the first opportunity, delaying everyone behind him by another four minutes or so. At this point I was already a full half-hour late with a fair amount of distance to go so I was less angry than I was exhausted. I remember looking him in the eye as he passed us going the other way and thinking "Really, asshole? What are you, a quitter?"
I ended up arriving at school almost exactly one hour late. When I entered the office and started apologizing (rule number one in Japan: always apologize no matter what), they made it clear they understood. As it turns out, I didn't have any classes that first period anyway and I had managed to arrive just in time to teach my second period lesson, which I did. Unfortunately, the snow didn't last until lunchtime so my I never got the chance to have any winter fun. All I got was winter aggravation.
It would seem that as far as my job was concerned, it was as if nothing had happened. Certainly that's what all the evidence seems to suggest, but much like that single car accident I'll never know for sure. It is entirely possible that I have, in fact, violated some unspoken rule and they will never trust me again, nor will they ever discuss what happened with me while quietly disapproving of my actions to all the other teachers in Hana Town. This being Japan, I wish I could tell you that was just crazy talk.
Angryface Postscript: When I got home, I got a response from the teacher I was e-mailing this morning to explain that I was late. He didn't check his mail until after work was finished, which means everyone at work was left wondering where the hell I was. Thanks a lot!
Labels: Chad, friends, Japan, JET, snow
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