Over the summer, I had the opportunity to stay in Tokyo for a couple of months as a part of an internship program that I got involved with. One of things that I immediately had to get use to when I arrived was the train system. Initially, it looks confusing but really, its quite easy and convenient. They have a color code system indicating that different lines that travel between each station. The local (black) line was usually the slowest, stopping at every station along its route, while the rapid (pink) or express (green) lines were a lot faster, skipping a lot of stations and usually stopping at the major ones. If you’re taking the train, the strategy was to take the rapid or express line as far as you could without skipping your stop and then transfer to a local line to reach your destination. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that way.

I remember this one time I was coming home and I saw that one of the green express lines stopped at my hotel. I was skeptical to get on it because I usually take the local line home but I just decided to try it. So as the train neared my stop, I was getting nervous because there were no signs that it was slowing down. And just as I feared, it skipped my stop. I was thinking to myself, “What did I do wrong?” When I got off at the next stop and I realized that the train I was on was a dark green line instead of a light green line. I felt like an idiot when I had to backtrack home, costing me an extra dollar or so. After that, I always double checked every route to make it was the right one.