Hakone Day 4: Running against the tide for the train (pg 1)
Written by silver on April 22nd, 2008
The past three days have been exhausting. Lots of walking, very little sleep. This past night was no different. After we got back we packed our bags and called Ed to coordinate the next few days. They were going to head down to Kyoto before us so we needed to decide how and when we would meet up next. We finally decided that they would meet us in Hakone for the day before going further south to Osaka for the night. We would then meet up again in 2 days in Kyoto.
As we went down the stairs to our train we heard the bell notifying everyone that the train was leaving. Ack! Since this was for a longer haul we didn’t know when the next train would arrive, for sure it would be at least another 30 minutes. Panicking, we made a run for it, entering the train right before the door closed and almost losing Di and Jason who got caught up in the crowd leaving and exiting from other trains in the process.
Whew!
Settling down we noticed our train was quite empty, we were the only ones in the car. Hakone being a more resort kind of town it was understandable that people don’t go during a weekday. As the train moved along, the ticket collector came by and asked for our tickets. We showed him our 2 day pass and he gave it back frowning and saying something we understood for wrong ticket.
Wrong ticket? I’m pretty sure our pass covers the transportation to Hakone. Does that mean wrong train? Does that mean we’re not going to Hakone?! I could’ve sworn we read the screen correctly and the announcer on the train said Hakone many times. Are they going to ditch us on the side of the track? The ticket man was starting to look upset. What renegades we foreigners are, trying to sneak onto trains, unthinkable, the nerve!
We tried to ask him if we could buy tickets right now from him. He didn’t get a word of what we said… Both groups confused now, the ticket man pulled out a job aid, and pointed to a sentence written in both Japanese and English. Yes, yes, wrong ticket. We know. Now please point to a sentence telling us how to fix it.
Ah! I remembered that in the guidebook it said something about being able to go to Hakone in a better and faster train called the Romance Train which wasn’t included in our two day pass but could be upgraded.
“Upgrade?” I asked, pointing to the pass and pulling out money.
This was something he apparently understood.
He then pulled out his pad, wrote down our seat numbers, calculated the cost of our upgrade ($8/each) and gave us the stubs.
Whew!