Anecdotes #3: The Perils of Too Much Luggage

April 25, 2008

Day 2: Friday, March 21st
Tokyo and Kyoto

I had told them to pack light.

Jenny pulled out a Cosco-sized tub of coffee and a jumbo can of jalapeños from her suitcase. She pulled out two large creamers, two sudoku books, and a fat tub of markers. She pulled out hot chocolate mixes, four kinds of tea, a couple cans of coconut milk, taco seasonings, pencils, candy, and a few magazines. This was all for me.

I brought one backpack and one small luggage.

I was touched that my friends back home had thought of me and gotten me so much stuff. At the same time, we were traveling, and when you travel in Japan, you want to try and pack light.

Jenny had to put everything back in her suitcase. We were going to Kyoto.

But first we had to get to Tokyo. We lugged the luggage up the overpass, pant, wheeze, to the station. We had to transfer lines. We dragged the luggage, thunk, thunk, down the stairs. We had to find out where to get tickets for the shinkansen (the bullet train). We pulled our suitcases, grumble, gripe, through the heavy crowds. And then we were on the shinkansen.

We could relax for a couple hours.

But our hostel in Kyoto was downtown. We had to transfer again. The problem was that we didn’t know which line to take. We knew the name of the station: Shijo. Unfortunately, both the subway and the train line had a station called Shijo—in different areas. We had to choose.

Of course we chose wrong.

We ended up in the middle of a crowded shopping area, with nothing that looked like a hostel in sight. Now we were dragging our suitcases, looking for our hostel and asking for directions. A kindly pedestrian told us we were in the wrong part of Kyoto and had to get on a bus. Jenny, grumpy from having to lug all the luggage around, preferred to take a cab.

The cab driver took us to the other Shijo station, but he didn’t know the right exit. We went down the stairs. We found our exit. We went up the stairs. We got to our hostel. It turned out we were on the third floor, and—guess what—no elevator.

This time I carried the luggage up the narrow stairs. It felt like my arm would fall off.

“I learned my lesson,” Jenny said to me later. “No more care packages for you.”