That Time We Took the Wrong Train in Japan
Oops!
I was thinking recently (as we rode the train in Italy) about the most interesting train ride we’ve been on so far and I realized that I never wrote about it! To tee it up, though, I should first tell the story of the train ride we didn’t take but tried to, so let’s go back to February 2024.
It was our last full day in Kyoto and the girls and I set out to go to Nara Park to see the deer. (C stayed back to watch the Superbowl.) Getting there involved taking the metro to the main train station, then catching a regional train to the stop near the park. It seemed straightforward enough; I read several travel and blog posts describing how to do it. Well, just because it seems easy doesn’t mean it will be.
The Kyoto train station is huge and you have to be in the right section to connect to the various train lines. So we came up from the subway and had to find the section with the regional trains. We stopped at an information booth and the agent there gave us a map that seemed simple enough to follow, with a few verbal directions in limited English that amounted to: “Look for the McDonald’s, make a turn, go up the escalator, and keep going.” Well, how hard could it be? Surely we could figure it out.
Spoiler alert: We could not. We never even saw the McDonald’s. In fact, I’ve perhaps never been so turned around in my life.
First, we ended up in the wrong area of the train station after passing through a fare gate, so then we had to figure out how to back out of that area. This involved contacting a station agent via a phone with a video screen. He spoke enough English to help us get untangled, but I was embarrassed, confused, and frustrated. We tried a different direction.
We ended up making it to the right section of the train station, almost. I mean, we could see where we needed to be. But there was another fare gate standing in our way. The agent there said we couldn’t go through it; I never figured out why. She tried motioning how we needed to backtrack and enter that section of the train station from somewhere else. I didn’t understand at all. I was so confused and suuuuuuuuuuper frustrated. By that point we had spent what felt like an age trying to navigate the train station and hadn’t gotten any closer to catching the train. (Click to watch the video short.)
That’s when I melted down. I felt defeated. I had been so excited to squeeze in one more adventure. Instead, it was slipping through my fingers. Who knew when we’d get back to Japan? The feeling of being so close, yet so far away is tough to swallow. I knew I needed to pivot and let go of my expectations, but I couldn’t. I let my disappointment run unchecked, and it came out in anger and exasperation, directed at the girls.
S was so embarrassed by and furious with me that she called C just to vent. You know you’re not winning Mom of the Year when that happens. It was not a shining moment for me. Unwilling to fully throw in the towel, we caught the regional train because I thought that would get us to Nara Park, albeit more slowly. Alas, Nara Park was apparently not meant to be that day (click to watch the video short) because the specific train we hopped on was ending sooner than the park.
I finally killed the idea at that point. We simply didn’t have time to find another way there; we were leaving that evening on a shinkansen back to Tokyo. Yes, apparently I thought it would be a good idea to pack an adventure in on the same day. Hahaha. 🤪🫣 (This is why I drive the family and myself crazy.)
For what it’s worth, we pivoted and took S to see the Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine since she had missed going with N and I several days prior, and then we explored Maruyama Park and the Yasaka shrine. So not all was lost, but no deer.
**********
Okay, so now we get to the story about how we took the wrong shinkansen. Theoretically, catching our train should’ve been straightforward-ish (famous last words for the woman who spent a chunk of the day already lost in the same train station!): We had our tickets; all we had to do was get to the station from the hotel and board the train*.
By now you understand that the station is large, with different types of trains (e.g., bullet trains, regional trains) and various destinations grouped in different areas. Figuring out where to go can feel like navigating a maze. And when you’re hauling luggage, trying to sort out what announcements may or may not be for you, and thinking about all of your other travel logistics (and how you already botched the day earlier), it’s a lot to navigate. Oh and, you know, things are predominantly in Japanese. Still, I thought we had this in the bag. We just needed to do the same trip in reverse that we had taken five days earlier.
We got to the station early, bought some food for the ride, used the restroom, and headed to the corresponding train platform. We felt proud of ourselves — or, at least, I did. I even took a selfie with the train I thought was ours pulling into the station.
I felt calm and certain that we were in the right place. When the train doors opened, we boarded the carriage that corresponded to our tickets, stowed our roller bags at the end of the train, and took our seats. Easy, peasy, all things considered.
I love the Shinkansen trains because they have spacious leg room. We settled into our seats and the train got going. I even filmed it.
Partway into the ride, the train agent came by to check our tickets and that’s when we discovered we were on the wrong train. 😱😱😱
I won’t lie: For a few minutes I panicked. I imagined we were going in the opposite direction from Tokyo and that we weren’t going to be able to get there in time to catch our flight the next day. I wasn’t worried about our safety and I knew in the back of my mind that we’d get things sorted, but it was anxiety inducing not knowing which direction we were even going or how we could rectify the mistake.
And wait: How did this even happen?! We had double checked the monitor and the gate. How had we gotten on the wrong train?! Figuring that out would have to wait. The urgent question was: What to do now?
There was a fair amount of confusion and lost in translation communication between C and the train agent, but it turned out we were somehow on a train to Tokyo (phew!), just a slower one. Okay, that was great news! We weren’t going to have to get off at the next stop and make a whole new plan. But while the train agent said we could stay on the train, we couldn’t stay in our seats because they weren’t actually ours and someone else had booked them.So he worked to find us other seats. This split us up as a family, which was okay, though N was losing her marbles given the uncertainty of the situation and S and I weren’t exactly calm, mostly because we were still confused. C and I were now communicating by phone since we were physically separated.
We got settled into new seats but, not long after, a couple appeared who had tickets to those seats. Oy. We had to scramble again. This time we moved to the first carriage of the train, the one with no assigned seating. Good thing we were traveling in the off season, so there were plenty of empty seats! Had it been a peak travel season, we might’ve been in trouble. The hardest part of transferring to the first carriage was moving through various carriages while rolling our bags and then finding space to store them. Turns out, it’s a bit of an unsteady feat to walk between carriages and down aisles when you’re moving at 285 km/h (177 mph)! We were glad to finally get settled for the rest of the journey.
So, what happened? Well, there were multiple trains going to Tokyo around the same time, only we hadn’t realized this. When you buy Shinkansen tickets, you can choose the speed of your train. We had picked the super fast train with fewer stops (Nozomi), but there was another fast train (Hikari) with more stops departing around the same time. Somehow that’s the train we ended up on.
Natasha actually put two and two together (or as she says: was looking at the correct monitor the whole time and felt “utterly flabbergasted” by how the family mucked things up 😆) but she wasn’t emphatic (enough) when she mentioned that we might not be at the right platform, and I was sure I was right (cough, cough). Chris had seen the same platform as me, so N got overruled. Well, she was right and we were wrong. Mea culpa.
The lesson here is multifold: First, triple check that you are looking at the right train number on the monitors, otherwise you’ll end up on the wrong platform and perhaps the wrong train! Second, pay attention to your departure time. Japanese trains leave exactly on time; they are ridiculously punctual. And the doors to the trains open just before departure. If we had been paying closer attention to the time, we would’ve realized that we had boarded the train early given the departure time for our actual train. Again, N caught this, but we waved her off. Yes, it was my second day in a row of falling short of Mom of the Year. Hey, I never claimed to be perfect!
Have you ever missed a train or gotten on the wrong one? (Or maybe the wrong bus, boat, etc.?) What happened and how did you resolve it? These mishaps can definitely be stressful in the moment but they usually make for good stories later. Ha!
*If interested, you can read more about the Shinkansen trains (and the train stations) here: