i had the power to go home, all along

One central fact of my life in Tokyo: doing Japanese things is convenient but hard. Doing American things is easy but inconvenient, because that usually involves trekking to base.

If you were to locate Yokota AB and Nishi-azabu (my 'hood) on a Tokyo map, you'd think, "Hey, that's not far at all." You'd be both right and wrong. If I was, say, a general, or Will Smith, and I could ride to base in a helicopter, it'd be a short hop. But for mere mortals unable to waste thousands of tax dollars, there are two choices: drive, or take the train.

The choice is pretty easy for me, because I don't have a driver's license. Or a car. Or any freakin' clue how to drive on the left.

Lucky for me, though: if you're going to rely on any train system, make it Tokyo's. Like almost everything in Japan, it's ruthlessly efficient. (D.C. Metro officials, take note: even though Tokyo's system involves several interwoven systems run by different companies, and is about 9,000 times more complex than any transit system in the States, it's rare for a train to be late, and "escalator outages at the following stations" is an unknown phrase. [The Japanese equivalent, I mean.])

So, yesterday I needed to do an "American thing" -- go to the doctor. I headed for Yokota, which is a time-consuming but not terribly hard trip. (Downsides: it involves four different trains, and at the last transfer the trains don't run very often. So the trip can take an hour or it can take 90 minutes, depending on the wait at Tachikawa.)

Or it can take four hours, when fate and gaijin ignorance collide:

I left Yokota last night with plenty of trains still running, and an assurance from the kickass hyperdia.com (thanks Dubees!) that the dreaded outdoor Tachikawa layover would be only a couple of minutes. That was welcome news, because the temperatures were "mid-winter" and I was dressed for "late spring."

Somewhere between Tachikawa and Shinjuku, my trip -- no pun intended -- started to go off the rails. An accident forced my train to hold at Shinjuku for over an hour -- and as Wednesday turned into Thursday, Tokyo's subway system bade the city goodnight, tucked its head under its wing, and settled into its nightly five-hour slumber. (A gripe: you'd think a city the size of Tokyo would run trains all night, but noooo.) By the time my train limped into the Yotsuya station at 1:15 a.m., my transfer trains had long since stopped running, and I was stranded.

Oh yeah, and I had no yen on me, except a handful of change, so calling a cab was out.

My immediate plan was to find an ATM, pay a giant fee, and withdraw some money, so my heart sank when I emerged from the station and discovered the surrounding area is almost vacant. Also? Japanese ATMs don't much care for them foreign-looking bank cards.

I started working my way down my narrow list of options. The Family Mart ATM rejected my card, as did the Circle K ATM. I passed a hotel (I wasn't sure if it was an actual hotel or a love hotel, but it was bitter cold and I was getting kinda desperate, so I tried it), but at that hour you needed a room key to open the front door. Freezing, exhausted and panicky, I tried the absolute last option: a 7-Eleven down the block.

My card was once again rejected at the ATM, and I broke down in tears, which alarmed the Japanese workers. One of them spoke a little English, and he anxiously offered to help.

(Aside: people back home often ask me if I speak Japanese. The answer: I'm learning, slowly. Mostly from a course called "Japanese for Busy People," which is geared toward people in Japan on business, so most of what I've learned is along the lines of "The meeting is at 3 p.m. Monday" and "I'm going to the Kyoto branch next week." We spend a lot of time making up sentences about the activities of fictional American businessman Mr. Smith, and his associates. Last week, the exercise "State who went where, and with whom" proved too tempting for me, and now Sumisu-san's having an affair with his secretary. It makes the lessons a lot more fun.

Anyway, I can communicate a little, but JBP hasn't prepared me for understanding the subway announcements that would have told me about the hourlong delay, or for trying to explain that I do HAVE money, I just can't access it, and I'm not just some insane airhead gaijin who can't hail a taxi and doesn't know how the trains work. I had a whole plan! But there was an accident! I don't think I adequately got that point across.)

SOOOO, the 7-Eleven guy's way of helping was to CALL THE POLICE to come help me. I was horrified, because there's all kinds of potential for something to go wrong there, and baffled, because how are the police possibly going to solve the problem? Bust open the ATM with a battering ram? Lend me 2,000 yen? Drive me home in a squad car? I felt like one of those morons who calls 911 to ask what time it is -- I had a problem, yes, but not one that needed to involve law enforcement.

So the police came, and at that point, I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability. WAIT, wait, sorry, that's a very funny Ron White routine. Let me start over. So the police came, and called a translator, who ...

(WARNING: anticlimactic ending ahead)

... informed me that taxis in Tokyo take credit cards.