Lost and Found

Rush hour JR train, Playboy Ad.

Though there is no excuse for the stupidity of my own action, the following story explains why I strongly dislike the Japanese Bureaucratic Heirarchy.

As I was rushing to my afternoon English lesson, I realized that I didn't have my Suica teiki. That is to say, I attempted to enter Shinjuku station and the gate tried to close on my leg rather than passing me through. At first, I wasn't surprised, as sometimes the machines fail to read my commuter pass when I swipe my wallet but when the same thing happened at Takadanobaba, I took a look to make sure my Suica was OK... lo and behold, it wasn't there at all.

I immediately knew where and why I'd left it. In the hustle to get to Harajuku yesterday I bought a ticket with some spare change and the remaining 60 yen on my Suica and then promptly took the ticket yet left the card, despite that the machine was probably beeping like mad at me to take it. Yeah, I'm a complete idiot but I blame the fact that I was entirely distracted by the crowd waiting for me and the fact that I was wearing a yukata and had neither pants pockets nor an accessable wallet probably caused me more readily to completely space that I had something to "put away." Quite honestly, it was the first time I'd ever used my suica to buy a ticket, too... usually I just use the Suica itself, which I charge with cash and then swipe, but as I'm leaving and don't want to put more cash on it before I go, I thought it best to drain the card completely one last time. My bad.

All righty. So, even though I was running late, I decided to stop in the ticket office and see if they'd collected my Suica. I was pretty confident someone would have turned it in and as the card only had three days remaining to expiration, I honestly didn't care if it wasn't found. I simply wanted to know if they had it or not and take it if they did. I figured five minutes was enough time. That was my second mistake.

The first gentleman to help me took a look in the record books-- notice I said BOOK and NOT "computer," for they were indeed giant PAPER TOMES-- and discovered that my card had been returned. Great, said I. He told me to wait a moment, as they would send someone from above. So I waited a moment.

And waited.

...

And waited.

Finally, a young-ish station worked came in the door and approached me. Did HE have my teiki? No. He wanted to escort me upstairs to the StationMaster's office where the 'proper' Lost and Found was located. Oooookay. I walked with him through the station, noting that he nervously looked behind him every two seconds as if to make sure I was following. It's not like I don't stand on that very platform EVERY DAY. In fact, his jitters were so apparent that he made ME nervous, and rightly so.

When we got to the office the door was closed, so he entered the security code and pulled. Nothing happened. He tried again and, to my dismay, not only did the code not work but the person standing inside the office retreated behind another closed door rather than help us out. The nervous station worker told me to "please wait" and ran off to leave me standing alone. Not two seconds after he disappeared, the person inside opened the door and told me to sit down.

Of course, nothing could be accomplished until Mr. Jitters returned, even though the NEW man was the StationMaster himself. MY story, as simple and straightforward as it was, was insufficient to do business. We had to wait for the noob to help me out. Five minutes later, my unhelpful intermediary skipped back into the office and apologized for having left me. Where the hell did you go?!? is what I wanted to scream but instead I just sucked it up and nodded. Can I have my teiki now?

I expected them to pull it out of a drawer and give it to me. But instead the StationMaster took out ANOTHER giant tome and looked up my name and the date I'd done the deed.

"Oh, HMM," said he.

"Um, WHAT?" said I.

"You bought this in Shinjuku, didn't you." was his unintelligible reply. Following that, he took a moment to convey some unintelligible explanation to the trainee, who by now seemed to have the shakes. Then he looked at me and said, point-blank,

"Your commuter pass is not here."

"Uh, excuse me?"

"You can pick it up in Shinjuku."

"Oh, ok... Shinjuku, yes, OK." I was a little pissed. Why was this not obvious in the first place? "I'll go get it later then," I said.

"Oh, no," he said, "you have to pick it up in three days. We have shipped it to sdkhkhgj to be processed and it should be in Shinjuku the day after tomorrow."

"You... w-what? My commuter pass expires in three days!" I was livid and on the brink of tears. This whole process took thirty minutes of being strung along for no reason other than that the one person privy to the information that needed to be relayed did not give that information to his second-in-command. Pure bureaucratic bullshit at its finest. An inefficient system performed with perfect efficiency. The bastards.

You see, I would not have minded in the least, had this information been relayed to me at the start. I would have said to myself "oh, what a dumbass you are for forgetting your teiki," and bought a new one later that evening. It only costs 2000 yen and that money is refunded to me in full. But, instead I was played like a fucking guitar and thrown out, twenty-five minutes late for a lesson I was supposed to be teaching, only so I could miss the Tozai line just as it was pulling away from the station. I thought I might kill the next person in uniform I saw... but instead I amused myself by internalizing my anger and watching the Centaa-gai [What is Center Guy? See LINK A and LINK B.] next to me out of the corner of my eye as he recoiled in terror at my enraged facial expressions.

I have met three kinds of Station Workers in my time here in Japan, though I suppose the same could be said of any repetetive job. First, there are the newbies who cower in fear of their superiors and are terrified of doing anything wrong. So terrified, in fact, that though they DESPERATELY want to help you to prove themselves, they cannot actually do anything without explicit permission or without their hand being held by a superior. The second type is those who have overcome their fear but have not been on the job much longer than a few years. These guys are great because they are courteous, knowledgeable, friendly and generally happy. They don't take bullshit but they don't give it either. The third type are the bastard Grandpas of the train stations. These fellows have been around forever and generally hate the noise, the people, the stupid questions and EVERYTHING about their job but of course they can't change their work because this is *Japan.* So instead, they put their passion into being crochety dicks to anyone and everyone and get the most pleasure out of purveying misinformation and scaring the newbies. Thus, a vicious cycle is perpetuated. A fun, fun cycle of threes of which I was the unfortunate victim today.

Look, I know that a lot of you think I hate Tokyo because I complain about it so much. The truth is, I don't. I love this city... but it is a VERY DIFFICULT, VERY STRESSFUL place to live. It is not always fun, no matter how amazing it is. Please keep in mind too, that this blog sees more ranting than raving for the sole simple reason that I am more likely to rant than I am to rave. It relieves stress, and stress I have. In conclusion... Friggin' yay; I'm ready to go home.