earlier morning shinkansen

I joined a triathlon club recently, not that I do triathlons, but one can always hope. The club is hosting a “training camp” for beginners this weekend in Niigata. I was trying pretty hard to avoid another early morning shinkansen, but I didn’t really want to miss more school by going earlier the day before, and it seemed better to just stick with the group, so alas I pretty much had the identical 4:30 am schedule (I did manage to go to bed before midnight at least so we’re slowly making improvements).

Last time I brought my ski bag, which is pretty big and bulky, but this time around, I brought my bike…which is lighter and smaller to be fair, but there are some rules around bringing bikes on public transit in Japan. I completely understand the rules, trains (and stations) are simply too crowded to be bringing bikes onto/into, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying. You can’t bring bikes on public transit as-is, you have to pack it up - you must disassemble the wheels and enclose the frame and wheels fully in a bag, and there are specific bags designed for carrying bikes onto trains, known as rinkobukuro (but people online have DIY’d the enclosures too).

It’s a bit of a hassle to do the disassembly at the train station, so I packed my bike up in my apartment ahead of time. The problem with this strategy is now I have to carry my bike in a bag, so not only am I not biking to the station, but my walking is significantly hindered by this bulky, painful object swinging from my shoulders. The answer to this question is probably “just get stronger”, but can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong? Carrying the rinkobukuro hurts so bad - all the pokey bits of my bike are constantly jabbing at my legs and arms and it’s for sure non-trivially heavy to carry on my shoulders.

Anyways, one advantage of the early morning trains is that they’re a lot less crowded than during the day or night. Or so I thought. I arrived at the station at 5:25 and the train rolled up, cars completely packed to the brim. My station (Takadanobaba) is usually a pretty popular one, so I was really hoping the cars would empty out, but nope, only like 3 people exited. When I was packing up this morning, I didn’t know where to put my helmet, so I just attached it to my backpack in a very suboptimal way (it was protruding from the back significantly). I was hoping to readjust on the very empty train where I’d surely get a seat. I tried to get on the train, but it was too packed, so I tried another door, and I could barely squeeze in with my bike. I felt so bad but I really had to catch my Shinkansen. However, because of my helmet, the conductor couldn’t close the train doors, so he kept yelling at me, but it was literally too crowded in the train for me to quickly fix the problem. That was a real embarrassing gaijin moment.

The Tokyo I know does not wake up at 5 am. So what were all these people doing on the train? I guess I was too early or something that I ended up catching one of the first trains of the day…meaning almost everyone there was going home from their night out. The train reeked of alcohol and definitely had people who were having trouble standing. Ugh, I’m such an idiot, but, it all worked out in the end, and lesson for sure learned. I should’ve just biked to the Shinkansen station (I think that’s what most normal people do anyways). My other mistake is that the Yamanote Line is just cursed, probably any other line would’ve been reasonable at this hour.

For those looking to carry bikes onto the train/subway in Japan, my tip is to 1) not (and especially not when it’s crowded, so… not the first train on Saturday, not morning, lunch, or evening because of work rush hour, which means, uh, never), but 2) tuck your bike along the edge of the seat. I think it’s the only reasonable spot that won’t get in everyone’s way (and the other big hack is putting your backpack on your front, then when you stand facing your bike you take up as little space as possible). For the Shinkansen, you have to put your bike in the cargo storage section behind the last row in your car, but there’s a chance you get unlucky and the rear storage is full. I don’t know what you’d do if that was the case, honestly. Last time I took a super packed Shinkansen with my ski bag I just stood and held my bag the entire time, but it was a really bad time.

My parting thought for today is packing and getting ready always takes so much longer than I think. I was really planning on going to bed at like 8, 9 last night, but I wanted to prep everything so I could just get up and go the next morning. Since I had so much time, I pumped up my tires, greased my chain, carefully packed my bike, etc. The mistake was thinking I had a lot of time, because that causes me to do everything super slowly and carefully. It’s not a bad thing, but, I really could’ve used the extra few hours of sleep.

Oh, and one more thing. I have such bad anxiety when I need to wake up early for something that without fail, I will have stress dreams the entire night. The dream is always like, I wake up and have a normal day, and then I look at my watch and it’s noon, and I’m like “huh I guess I missed __, oh well.” Oddly enough, in my dream I’m pretty calm, and then I realize I’m in a dream and tell myself, “seems like a lot more than 5 hours has passed, I bet I actually slept through my alarm.” I then end up waking up every few hours, and as the time that I actually need to wake up approaches, I end up waking up more and more frequently, to the point of waking up every few minutes. I don’t know why I have so much alarm distrust, but, it is what it is I guess. Just need to sleep earlier in the future.