I Spent New Years on the Train from Hell

It was my final New Years Eve in Japan. We usually spent the evening at the Enlisted Club on the base, but this year it was decided to go to Tokyo. We had learned the trains ran all night on New Years, so we would have no trouble getting home. Jim worked part time as a bouncer at one of the clubs Roppongi, so it was decided we would go there.

Once off the train, it took us forever to find the club. The females in the group were Navy WAVES, and not used to wearing high heels, so we were more than thrilled to finally enter Pirates Cove. Bouncer Jim, his girl friend Regina, and another guy named David were already there and had a table set up for us, luckily. It was a popular place. By the time we got settled in, we had a party of seven. I am not going to lie, and tell you it was the time of my life, because I was rather bored with the whole scene, but it was interesting watching the people around us.

 At a large circular table was a group of young men. They all seemed to hanging onto every word uttered by one man. He was young, dressed in a nice suit and wearing a knitted stocking cap. Jim told us that he was a very rich young man and he had a following. They were regulars at the club. They left shortly after we arrived, but returned about a half an hour later. I knew it was rude to laugh at people, especially in a country like Japan where the people do not like to “lose face”, but it was very hard controlling ourselves. When the men returned, their leader had changed dress. Literally. He was wearing a white ballet tutu, ballet slippers, prettiest pearly white stockings I had ever seen. (I spent two months looking for some just like what he was wearing). He had a strand of pearls and still wore his knitted stocking cap. He just decorated it with a plastic flower!

In Japan, boys and girls rarely dance with each other. There were mirrors set up around the dance floor so they could dance with themselves, or they would dance in groups. A group of girls, or a group of boys. We were a source of entertainment when we danced with our dates, but I just couldn’t dance in front of a mirror. David didn’t have a date, so he danced the night away with the rich boy and his groupies.  

It was getting late, and to tell the truth, David was probably the only one having a good time, so still sober (well most of us) we decided to catch the train home. We went to the depot that we took home all the time, but no train seemed to be coming. We waited for a long time, when a Japanese man came up to us and told us no train would be coming to the spot. “You will have to take that train home” as he pointed to the only train in sight. He assured us that it would take us to the stop closest to the base, so we went to it. It was getting crowded already and seats were taken. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time we had to stand. We kept waiting for the train to move but it didn’t, and it kept getting more and more crowded. Body to body, the train finally pulled out. Then we figured out it was a “milk stop train”. It stopped at every little stop on the line. After what had to be an hour of travel time, and we didn’t seem to be much closer to home, Regina started complaining about the ankle she had twisted earlier in the evening. We had traveled for so long, we figured we had to be pretty close to the base, so we would find a taxi and take it the rest of the way. David said he spotted a taxi at the next stop, so we pushed our way out of the train, just to find that there was no taxi in sight. Another couple got off behind us. An American with a Japanese girl friend. He asked her where we were and she didn’t even know! We knew we were in trouble then. So, our bright idea was to call for a taxi. We figured out that didn’t work. None of us spoke Japanese and we didn’t know where we were. So, we had to wait for another train and hope it was going our way.

There was a group of Japanese girls waiting down the platform, so we figured another train would be coming sometime soon. It wasn’t too long of a wait, when we heard the train coming down the tracks. Then we heard the girls screaming! My first thought was someone fell onto the track! Before I started running to see what the matter was, the train pulled up and I saw what all the screaming was about. I have never in my two years in Japan had seen a train as crowded as this one was. There were faces pressed against the glass of the doors! But, we knew we had to get on this train, so a few people got off and we pushed our way on. Jim, the big bodied bouncer, looked down at me and said, “Rhonda, my feet aren’t touching the floor!” The train was so crowded, he was lifted off his feet. After a few stops, I was thankful we were close to the doors. I kept seeing people in the middle moving around at each stop and I figured they had been trying to get off five stops or so ago.

At one of the larger stops, quite a few people got off, so we had a little breathing room, until a Little League team piled on. At least one of those kids had to die on that train. There was no way they could breathe in a train full of big people. I was beating one poor little boy in the face with my purse all the way to our final stop. It was a sense of relief to get off the train from hell, but left me with the most memorable New Years I have ever had.