 |
| Above, Yachiyodai Station in Chiba Prefecture. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
For about 16 hours, I was stuck in a Keisei Line train car at the Yachiyodai Station in Chiba Prefecture due to snow. The station is situated in-between Narita International Airport and Tokyo.
When I left Japan last Saturday, (out of curiosity) I timed how long it would take to reach Yachiyodai Station from Ueno Station in Tokyo.
The train left Ueno Station at 10:55 a.m. and we reached Yachiyodai at 11:35 a.m. It is interesting that we were stuck only 40 minutes outside of Tokyo (including all stops along the route up to that point).
I checked with Google Maps and here's (below) where Yachiyodai Station is located (marked with "A"). It doesn't look that far from Tokyo. Trouble is, besides the snow stopping train service, there were no buses or taxis available to take anyone into Tokyo (the fare probably would have been expensive anyway). A few people, including me, considered doing that.
One thing Keisei Line people did for us, they gave us a special ticket that entitled the bearer to free transport into Tokyo. Other train lines honored it, including the Metropolitan subway lines. This came in handy as it took me another four hours (after leaving Yachiyodai Station) to finally reach my hotel.
This was definitely a case of "so close, but yet so far."
No comments:
Post a Comment