My Evil Day

Today, I set out on my adventure to get my bag that I left on the train a couple of days ago.

The bag had been located in a small town called Hojomachi/Kasai. Depending on what part of town your in depends on what the town is called...don't ask. I like Hojomachi because it has "Hojo" in the name. Either way, Hojomachi/Kasai is a little less than three hours away and I really wasn't looking forward to buy the train tickets to get there. Round trip was going to cost me almost $30 and I thought that was a tad high, seeing that I was going to get a piece of luggage and no more. It was while I was in my train station I started my day of evil.

Instead, of buying my ticket to a town called Ao that I was going to need to go to in order to get to the train to get me to Hojomachi and paying $12, I decided to try out a scheme I have been devising for a while. I bought a ticket for the lowest price possible, $1.80. This was enough to get me through the gate and on to my train. The fun part about the Japanese Railroad is that there are tons and tons of routes that are pointless and stations that are never manned. On these pointless routes, no one bothers to check your ticket during the ride. I made it to Ao on $1.80. Normally, this would not have worked because in order to go through the exit gate, I would have had to pay the full amount because the gate machines have scanners that can tell where your ticket originated from and how much fare you should have to pay. The upside to today's venture was that I never had to leave the station to get onto the Hojo Tetsudo line. I simply walked over a walkway and on to my other train. Sometimes, they post station workers at the doorways of the incoming trains but not today. So for that leg of the trip I spent $1.80 and this pleased me.

Legs two and three, I had to pay for. The train conductor collects money as you exit the vehicle and you can't really get around it. So now, this puts me back at Ao with lost luggage in hand and needing to jump another train for the return trip. I knew that I would have to stop at another station called, Tanikawa (no cool secondary name) and so I decided that instead of paying full price for a ticket to Fukuchiyama from Ao, I payed $5.70 for a ticket from Tanikawa. I am wise. Overall, I save about $12 on the trip and that made me happy. There are other ways to shaft the trains that I will get into some other time but are kind of sketchy and I have not done them. One is really cool, but its only good for people that live here and have a good knowledge of their area's train network. I will talk about that one later too.

Lastly, all of the stuff that made me antsy last night and caused me to lose my appetite through all of today has passed. I had to do someting slightly evil to get myself back on track again but now I am all better. What was bothering me? What evil thing did I do? I'm not going to say but I do feel better now. Sometimes tilting a little more to the Dark Side is fun and makes you feel good. Don't worry, I didn't off anyone or anything like that, this was more of an escapade than pure evil. Escapades and shinanagins are fun and do not cause harm, while true evil can cause physical and mental harm, at least thats my definition. :) This did neither of those. I am going to stop typing now or else I will give it away and I can't do that. :)