… you’d discover first that the meaning of your life and the meaning of the train’s are quite different things. Second, you’d learn in short order not to ask questions of trains because that is actually silly and there are far better ways to spend your afternoon.
For these reasons, I didn’t ask a train about my existential questions, but I did take a girls’ trip to Hiroshima a couple weeks ago in which trains—and indeed buses and feet and planes—invited me to do a lot of waiting. And we all know what sort of existential commentaries arise if you wait around doing nothing for too long.
I’ve taken only two girls’ trips in my life and the first mistake we made on this one was to book ourselves a 7:25 am flight. The airport is thirty minutes by train and the station is twenty minutes by foot, so we rolled ourselves out of bed on the day of our trip at 4:30 am to finish our last-minute packing and throw together some breakfast. Well, the eggs were too hot to eat, so breakfast ran long, and then we ourselves were running long to the station with our carry-on bags and our last brain cells, and then the 5:52 train was running to the airport long before we scrambled onto the platform. We missed it by about ninety seconds.
We stood briefly like homeless drifters on the train platform in the are-we-dreaming light of the fluorescents and the confused smear of dawn. Then, with no other option, we plopped down in the waiting-room benches, whipped out our phones, and began researching train times, cab prices, airline policies.
The next train wouldn’t be for another fifty minutes, by which point we’d miss the check-in period for our flight. We could call a cab, but at 6 am it’d certainly cost more than the train and there was no telling if it’d even be faster.
The last one of us to finish her egg wallowed in guilt over ruining the trip and the rest of us admitted it was a group effort. So we slouched at the station in relatively sodden moods until the next train finally came. Halfway to the airport the train stalled for several minutes while the following station cleared a traffic jam, and when we reached the airport help desk, the attendant told us we’d have to book a whole new flight, no reschedules or refunds.
Those ninety seconds ended up delaying the trip by about seven hours and several hundred dollars, and on the second day of the trip, our navigation backfired and we missed our bus.
Yep.
All of us sat at the bus station for an hour while we waited for the next bus—a local line that would take twice as long as the one we’d missed—but compared to the trouble with the flight, this was nothing. We took up a table at a local cafe and bought ourselves tea. This mishap cost us only two hours, but given we only had a handful of hours on the trail we were taking to begin with, it was a considerable blunder. At the end of our hike, we were so traumatized about missing our return bus that we literally jogged the winding mountain trail back to the stop to make it on time. (We made it.)
More times than I can count since I’ve come to Japan, I’ve stood or sat at train stations and bus platforms, waiting for a ride or a connection, sometimes for thirty minutes or longer. I’ve probably racked up a good many hours of walking to and from stations over the past months. And I sometimes appreciate the convenience of private vehicles, driving directly from your location directly to your destination. But trains and buses and walking and biking have helped me to remember—or even to learn for the first time—what it means to be one small part of a bigger whole.
The trains will go regardless of whether or not I am on them. They do not wait. There are other people who need them to go where they go on time, even if the time I need is different. But I’m realizing it might be good for some things to be inconvenient. It’s a reminder that the world is not mine, that the time I’m given belongs to more than just myself, that waiting has a value all its own.
So should I still be the foreigner sprinting madly through the station to reach my platform on time?
Um, yeah. Run. Missing your train freaking sucks.
Emilyn Shortridge (’25) spent her Calvin years studying English linguistics, Asian studies, and ministry leadership, and intends to finish her Asian studies program in Chiba, Japan, in 2026. When at home in Plymouth, Michigan, she thrives anywhere near fantasy novels, houseplants, hot tea, or her calico cat, Genie, but she plans to live and learn in many cultures before deciding which corner of the world needs her most.
