A Woman with An Iron Heart!

 

Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

The nearest train station from my home that I usually use has no station attendants on site. All it has are a ticket vending machine and an emergency phone. There’s no ticket gate either. A passenger gets a ticket from the machine and goes directly onto the platform. Upon arrival, they put the used tickets into a box on the wall. There are several no-attendant stations like that along this local line.
That means it’s possible to ride free if you get on and off the train both at those stations. It’s kind of an honorable system that whether you pay for the ticket or not all depends on your conscience.
Of course riding a train without a ticket is a crime. To crack down on it, a conductor sometimes makes spot checks on the train. He or she checks all passengers’ tickets and stamps on them. If someone has a ticket for the minimum fare, the conductor asks the destination and collects the full fare. Since many passengers make the payments on the train, I suspect the honorable system doesn’t work so well.
I’ve once seen a passenger without a ticket caught by the conductor. She received the conductor’s severe rebuke and paid a lot of money. Some passengers try so badly not to be caught when a conductor begins the spot check. Their common ways are simply running away from the conductor by moving back and forth between the cars. A conductor sometimes gets off the train and steps onto the platform at a no-attendant station to check the tickets of the passengers who get off there. In those cases, a passenger who cheats on the fare walks toward the far end of the platform opposite to the conductor. The train eventually has to leave on schedule and the conductor doesn’t have enough time to go up to the passenger for the ticket. The passenger waits there for the train to leave with the conductor back on while pretending to rummage through his or her bag for the ticket that doesn’t exist.
The most impressive passenger I’ve seen was a young woman who pretended to sleep in her seat when the conductor asked her to show a ticket. No matter how loudly the conductor asked repeatedly, she wouldn’t wake up. Although he almost shouted in her ear in the end of the persistent demands for the ticket, she was still asleep. I thought if she wasn’t acting, she was dead. After he went back, her acting finished and she woke up. Unfortunately for her, the conductor was as determined as she was, and came back to her again. She was caught this time, but pretended to look for her ticket and declared she had lost it somewhere. A woman with an iron heart! She told her departure and destination stations which credibility was questionable, and paid the fare to the conductor after all.
A stingy person like me buys a ticket each time. Even so, I feel nervous and have shifty eyes every time a conductor walks through the train cars. That’s because I may or may not devise some ways to save money for the ticket, but I leave it to your conjecture…

Episode from

Country Living in Mountain of Japan by Hidemi Woods [Click to Buy at Amazon.com]

Kindle and Audiobook available at Amazon.com

Hidemi’s Rambling No.540

My grandfather and I used to go to the department store together when I was a small child. He had a pass that entitled senior citizens to a free ride of the municipal streetcar. He usually said, “Not using the free pass is waste of money,” and tried to take the streetcar as much as he could although he had no place to go. As part of his useless effort, he often went to the department store where he didn’t have to go at all, and made me accompany him. While he didn’t have anything to buy, he strolled around all the floors. To get only one different floor he used the elevator that had an operating girl inside who would push the buttons and say the floor information, and the other girl outside who would close the outside iron door manually. It seemed he enjoyed the ride as a free attraction. His typical behavior was to ask a salesclerk the price whenever he spotted something expensive that he had no intention to buy, and to exclaim loudly, “How expensive!” He often looked into the costly merchandise that was on display in the glass case, asked the price, cried his ‘how expensive, and just walked on. When he was looking into the glass case of fountain pens intently one time, the salesclerk asked if he wanted her to take some pens out of the case and show them to him. He pointed out one by one and the clerk put them out on a sheet of velvet. He asked the price each time and at each answer he exclaimed, “How expensive!” “Outrageous!” “That much for a pen?”“Really, really expensive!” His loud remarks rang out through the quiet, elegant floor. After five or six pens were laid on the velvet, he just thanked the clerk casually and left the counter as if nothing happened. Even as a small child, I duly sensed his behavior was fundamentally embarrassing. That was why I hated to go out with him so much. In the lunchtime, he would order the most inexpensive noodle at the food-court-like restaurant on the top floor of the department store. He always ordered one dish for two of us and asked for an empty small bowl to divide the noodle into two. While I ate the smaller portion, he eagerly poured free tea, saying, ”Make your stomach full with free tea if that’s not enough!” We usually had a lot of free tea since we were hungry with only one noodle, and the huge kettle on our table went empty fast. The table was shared with eight people and each table had one kettle. He would start going around other tables for a full kettle. Many kettles were sometimes empty and he would go to the far end of the restaurant for free tea while checking the remaining content of every single kettle along the way. He would loudly say, “Those who pay for a drink are crazy when they have free tea!” right next to a customer who was drinking a glass of soda. In those cases, he would return to our table with a kettle in his hand as if he had hit a gold mine. Even a small child like me understood that his habit was extremely embarrassing and I really hated to go out with him. He did all of these things so happily by wearing tattered clothes and shoes with a hole, and he clearly enjoyed it immensely. I grew up and noticed there was a terrifying thing such as atavism. When I visit an outlet mall, I first go through price tags to see the percentage of discount, and if the percentage is big enough, start looking the merchandise itself. Last time, my partner asked me to quit that habit of mine. He wants me to look at the merchandise first, then the price tag. I don’t order a drink at the food court because it has a free water server. I also bring an empty plastic drink bottle from home and refill it with the free water for later breaks. “Those who pay for a drink are crazy when they have free water,” I usually murmur in my mind…