Yesterday I had a very good day back at work. Mostly I could catch up with my students and hear about their holidays, talk about my holiday, and hand out goodies that we brought back from Europe. People were happy to see me back, which in turn made me very happy as well.
After work my contact at OTC came by to support a lecture that another (Japanese) OTC teacher was making to the workers at KHI. It was a “Motivation Up” lecture, designed to get them to want to study English more. I was surprised at the turnout – nearly 150 people showed up and filled their lecture hall. A lot of my students (both current and former) showed up as well, so it is good to see interest in English study continuing to rise.
So I took my good day vibes out the door at 5:30 and headed to the station, and caught a train heading home. As the train pulled halfway into Akashi station we made a sudden emergency stop, and the driver announced that there had been an accident with our train and a person on the platform and we needed to hold on.
Everybody knew what that meant – somebody just committed suicide by train.
Collective reaction of the train passengers: groans and frustration. Suicide by train is fairly common around here (actually suicide in general is fairly common around here) and so there were no gasps of surprise. Just the realization that it was going to take a lot longer to get home tonight.
After about 20 minutes of waiting they decided to open some of the doors of the train – the doors that happen to be lined up with the platform. The train car I was in was still outside the station, so we lined up and went between cars to the front car, and got off there. Turned out that whatever was left of the jumper was underneath our car, so crews were trying to figure out how to deal with it, police were interviewing some crying people, and most people walked around the gathering gawkers to exit the station and find some other way home.
Kuniko offered to come and pick me up, but I was able to find a taxi on a side street and catch a ride home that way. Cost me 2000 yen, but I was still home at a reasonable time.
That was the first time that a suicide has affected me directly on my commute. Often trains our delayed due to a suicide somewhere else, but this was the first time that it happened to my train.
It was good to come home to Kuniko already cooking our dinner, and catch up on our days and to remember how lucky we are, and how good it is to be alive.
