1 Express Train to Wandarando

My back hurts. I'm aware that I am sitting and, that my back hurts. The stiffness in my joints tells me I have been there some time. My eyes are closed and my brain is a mess of clouds and fog. I'm sitting, my eyes are closed, my brain is a mess and my back god damn hurts. I'm conscious that I am somewhere, but that hardly brings me any confidence or comfort. In fact I realise I'm feeling a little panicked... Why is my head cloudy, Why are my eyes closed? And why does my back hurt? After a little time the fog begins to filter away and I am left with three shapes floating in the milky blackness of my mind. The shapes slowly form together, becoming lines and circles, eventually fusing together into words.

"Where are you?"

The question cuts through my mind like a piece of razor wire. It pierces though my brain and shoots out through my brow. The feeling is sharp, painful and sends a ripple of intense buzzing through my ears. Where the hell am I? I open my eyes on instinct, and the words dissipate like a migraine aura. The light of the waking world floods my retinas and shapeless colours shimmer and moves blearily in my vision.

I feel nauseous — my eyes flutter open and closed as I adjust to the light. 'Fuck…' I croak out, as I grab my stomach, buckle over and wretch. But as I dry-heaved out only stale air from my bone dry throat, I realize there is nothing in my guts to come spit out.

I stay bent over for a while. My vision clears and I become conscious that I am staring at a blue-gray linoleum floor. I take a few deep breaths in, then out. The steady flow of oxygen gives my spinning mind something to focus on. Eventually, the world comes back into focus. The pain in my skull doesn't totally fade, but it does ease up till I am able to think and move coherently.

'Okay…' I grunt to myself as I take one final, deep breath. Then I suck a sharp breath in through my nose, and straighten my back out so I am sitting upright. My spine buckles and pop as most of the stiffness and pain disappears. Now that I am conscious and cognitive I start to look around.

There are dull gray walls in front of me and behind me. At my eye level is a strip of advertisements that are rife with soulless promises. The strip of colour is only ever broken up by a small, pressurized window approximately every three meters. Underneath the ads and their bright pastel colours is a long bench seat, that is cushion with a cheap blue polyester fabric. Finally, above the ads and the seat was a luggage shelf made of wiry steel. About every half a meter there was a triangle handle hanging from a cord attached to the luggage shelf. The triangle was made of a dreary brown plastic. It slowly dawned on me as to where I was.

I looked to my left and to my right. A long corridor greets me to either side. Every dozen meters there is a double door that is opened by a fist sized button.

Am I on a train? I let the thought slowly sink in. First it settles in my mind, and then in my bones. It has to be train. It is the only place that makes sense. It all looks like a standard Tozai Metro passenger train.

What the hell am I doing here?

It would not have been the first time I had fallen asleep on a train. I work… a lot… And as a preschool teacher I often go home both mentally and physically exhausted. However, I live in Chiba, just outside of Tokyo. A highly urbanized area. If I was anywhere near my apartment, I should have still been able to see three-story-tall pachinko parlours and countless ramen bars outside the window. So why the heck am I staring at trees?

I let the message that I want to stand up fire off in my brain and crawl through my nervous system. My muscles start the process of rising and I almost buckle from a fatigue that I can only compare to jet-lag.

Crap! Take it slow Theo… I tell myself as I reach up and grab one of the plastic triangles hanging above me to steady myself.

I decide to take stock for a moment before taking on the challenge of "walking". I use that time to think back. Where was I before this train? Nothing. Okay… Where was I this morning? I can all but here the crickets. Yesterday? Every question drew a blank. I start to file through any of my recent memories, looking for anything I can hold onto. When did I last go to work? Or wake up in my bed? What about walk around Shibuya? Every question just ends in the same blanks. I had memories of my life. People, places and events that all resonate as important in my mind. But there was nothing concrete in terms of recent events. At least in as far as where I had been recently, and how I got to… wherever the heck this is…

I register a familiar weight on my shoulder and realize that I am carrying my work bag — a white slingshot bag — over my shoulder.

So I must have come here straight form work… I think to myself, all while theorizing a dozen reasons why that could not be the case. I thought of this as my "work bag" but really I used it for almost every time I went out.

My sense of space finally stopped spinning and I straightened myself fully, my various bones popping as I flexed muscles that had been still for what had to be hours.

I had to be on the Tozai Line. I'd remember if I had been traveling on anything else. I took a few methodical steps towards the nearest window as I thought. The Tozai was the only line that travelled through my home station. It also took my straight to my schools station in Nakano – a lengthy trip on a busy line. I knew it often went all the way to Nishi-Funabashi before the same train converted to a different line and continued into the heart of Chiba prefecture. But I could not for the life of me remember what that line was called, or where the train finally terminated.

'What on Earth…' I mutter as I lean down to look out the window. The view that greets me is the tell -tale walls and signage expected of a rural train station in Japan which – for the most part – makes sense. But I had been expecting something… big? I guess. If this was the terminal station for a major train line that travelled through the heart of Tokyo, I assumed we would terminate in a major location such as Chiba city.

However, what I could see through the window were the yellow walls of a small country town train station. I spin around and look out the window on the other side of the train, staggering a little as my head whirls with how fast I had taken the turn and my residual grogginess. The window I was now facing presents me with a mess of foliage, bushes and long, unattended grass. It all soon ends in what looks like the face of a mountain that has been carved out to make way for the train line.

Where the hell am I?

I cannot lie. I feel uneasy as the concept of just how lost I am sets in. Japan is hardly the scariest country to lose your way. But I have no concept of where I am, what day it is, or how I even got here!

The other major problem I face with getting lost is I don't speak Japanese. I make an effort to regularly study, but I work at an international pre-school for a reason. I am pretty good at the basics like introductions and talking about the weather or the time. However, I can't hold anything like a real conversation about complex directions. I was not worried about my safety or even my ability to get home sooner or later. But based on the light level outside I was guessing it was around mid-day. If I was meant to be at work and had not called in about being absent then I would be lucky if all my principal did was dock my pay.

My phone! The idea shoots through my skull and a wave of relief hits me. What was done was done. I may have to beg my boss for forgiveness later. But my phone should give me something to where to start. I could read the time, check where I was on the GPS, plan my journey home. I could even find out if I was lucky and today was Sunday — my day off — so I wouldn't have to contact work.

I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I press the button on the side to wake it up. However, the screen remains black. Realization creeps up th back of my spine and I feel my heart drop. The battery is dead? You have got to be God damn kidding me! I hold the power button down for a few seconds longer. I am silently praying to God that I had been smart enough to turn it off before I fell asleep, and so I might have some power left. For a second the android logo flashes up on my screen and my heart springs up with joy. But it is all for nothing, as a second later the black and white battery logo flickers before my eyes. A huge slash though the center of it. A moment later the icon blinks out and I am left with the black screen of a lifeless brick in my hand.

'Crap!' I spit in frustration at the ceiling of the train. Don't make a scene. I silently scold at myself in my head.

However, it then something else hits me. Probably the strangest thing I had seen — or in this case not seen — on this train. Who am I trying to save face from? As far as I can see there is no one else on the train. When I had looked through the windows I didn't see anyone out there either. I turn back around and look out the window that faces the station. There are no passengers waiting, and no one behind the ticket gate either. As far as I can see, there isn't soul anywhere in sight.

Another thought crawls into my mind. How long have we been sitting here? I wonder. Trains don't run all that late in Tokyo. At least not in comparison to any major city I've been too. But like I said earlier, it looks like it is about the middle of the day outside. I may not have my phone or a watch to be sure about the time. But we must have been sitting on the platform of this one sleepy station for at least fifteen minutes now.

A growingly familiar — yet still uncomfortable — feeling starts to creep up my spine again and my chest goes tight. I had been so confused by where I was and how I got here, I hadn't given any meaningful thought to the world around me.

If we have been sitting here this long, I doubt we will be going anywhere soon, I think. Then I walk over to the closest door and chew my tongue a moment. This is a small town. It wasn't strange for it to be super quiet, even in the middle of the day. But no matter how far I had travelled out of the major cities of japan, not once had I ever felt this genuinely isolated. A country as small as Japan, with a population as high as this tiny cluster of islands has… surely nowhere is this quiet… right? So what the hell was going on here?

I glance at the open button in the center of the door. The round light around it is glowing green, indicating that it both has power and is unlocked. I take a deep breath, accepting that sitting around here isn't going to get me anywhere. Then I hit the button. The doors beep a couple of times, then slide open with a smooth shulk sound.

I step out onto the platform. Nothing seems "wrong" in any normal sense. It's not like the windows or the vending machines were smashed open. There also isn't any toppled furniture or damage to the exterior of the station building that could be expected after a natural disaster like a typhoon or earthquake. In the traditional "small Japanese town" fashion, everything just seems "clean". There's no graffiti, no trash, not even much dirt or mud. Nothing except a tired sense of "old" hanging in the air.

I naturally wander over to the blue and white sign that should have the station name. This is my first concrete proof that this town is a little less… conventional than any other place I have been to.

As far as I know, all stations in Japan have the station sign that lists the name in both Japanese kanji and hiragana characters. Every major station I've seen will also always have the English, Korean and Chinese alphabet versions too.

In a small town like this English isn't a guarantee, so I was prepared to fumble my way through the hiragana name if I have too. However, while the sign I was looking at certainly looked like a standard Japanese station sign. The letters plastered across it sure as hell weren't any kind of English… yet neither were they Japanese, Chinese or Korean… In all honesty the weird mess of swirling lines and pictographs did not look like any language of Earth. The strange design made me think of something closer to a combination of Sand-script and Egyptian Hieroglyphs…

I can feel my heart had start to pick up its pace in my chest. What the crap have I gotten myself into?

Turn back. Get on that train. Keep your head down and wait till it gets you the hell out of here! Says the voice in the back of my head. Who cares if it takes hours or even days. You know what trains are. You know what they do. It will move eventually and get you the hell out of this place. Because whatever is waiting for you through those ticket gates isn't something you were meant to see.

I realise this may be one of those times where my inner coward may have a good point. So I turn back around to face the train. The door I exited through is still there, open and inviting me with the familiar ads, seats and walls. I take a step towards it.

'Rawwwr?'

The sound came from behind me an causes me to jump. It pulls my focus from the train and I crane my neck around to look back at the station. There is a black and white cat lying on the counter-top at the ticket gate. Its blue eyes are fixed on me. It is always hard to read animals facial expressions. But I get the sense that it is contemplating my existence with far more severity than I would expect from a cat.

'H… hey?' I say to the cat. Where had it come from? With how it is lounging about it looks like it has been there for a while. But I swear I didn't see it a moment ago…

The cat rose to its feet at my words – almost as though it understood me. Then it pads a few steps towards me and meows in a sleepy tone. It seems friendly, and despite everything I step over towards it. I also can't help noticing that the small thing is incredibly skinny. A pang of concern shoots through my gut. I know a hungry cat isn't the kind of thing I should worry about right now... But what can I say, I like animals.

'Hey little guy, you hungry?' I ask the cat as I try to approach it. I reach my hand towards it and the cat shifts its small face to give my fingers a delicate sniff. I brace myself in case it suddenly strikes out with its claws. But an attack never came. Instead it nuzzles its off-white snout into my palm and rubs its ear against my thumb. It's fur feels matted and scratchy and I have to assume it is a stray.

'Poor guy…' I say, tutting my tongue. 'No one's been around to feed you have they?'

I gently retreat my hand, making sure I don't alarm my new fury friend. Then I reach for my slingshot bag. I can't remember packing it. So can't be sure what is in there. But I normally try and keep a couple of energy bars for days where I need the boost. It's not real cat food, but it is alll I have on hand.

I glance down for a moment to find the zipper. Then start to pull it open. However, the sound of the zip must startle the cat, because before I even reach inside I hear a muffled scuffling sound. I look back at the ledge the cat had been lying on and see it springing to its feet, then leaping off the edge before sprinting into the station.

'Hey wait!' I call, as I reach out a hand — like I had a chance of catching the sprinting cat. In reality it was long gone before I even had my hand raised.

My heart drops. I knew I should get back on the train, curl up and wait for escape. But I also realise I'm not going to. Instead I'm going to do something unbelievably stupid. I swiftly zip up my bag and sprint after the damn cat.