Ah, what a morning.

Since our grandmother's helper, Romichan, rushed away to deal with a chicken-pox related family emergency, my mom and I have been staying at the house. It is four train stops away from where we usually live which is where my bus stop is.

So. The adventure begins.

Usually, I take the 7:05 train, only to arrive far to early and have about ten minutes to stand and freeze in the cold while waiting for the bus. I decided that I could easily get on the 7:10 train and still make it with about five minutes to spare. I didn't know when to leave the house to catch this train, however, so I arrived precisely at 7:10. The times on Japanese train schedules signify the times that trains depart and the next train left at 7:16. The train itself takes about ten minutes from starting at the departure station to stopping at the arrival station. My bus leaves at 7:26. I was in a panic, but, as is the case with most public transportation, there was nothing in the spectrum of reality that I could do to rush until I got off the train at Meguro.

Doors open. A crowd of people spooge out of the doors like mud between toes. There's a guy screaming that he doesn't have is luggage, over and over at the top of his lungs. This confuses me, since he has a very luggage-esque object hanging on his shoulder. He, like many people in Tokyo, is most likely crazy. In any case, I rushed up the stairs as fast as the ameboid-crowd would allow and giggled privately at the man who was still belting about his luggage. I made my way through the barrier and ran like hell to the bottom of the first escalator of three, skipped steps to the top (an attempt disrupted by a very uncool trip in the middle) and realized that my legs were numb. There was a searing pain in my heart area. "Ack!" I thought as I forced my legs to support my torso as I pulled myself up the hand rail. Fortunately, as my bus stop came into sight, the bus was just about to pull in. I stopped killing myself slowly and performed a wobbly speed walk onto the bus. While sitting in the back seat, my body screamed at me "WHYYYY?!"

It has taken me such an experience to realize that I need to do some exercise. I have enough energy to climb up the four flights of stairs to my apartment every day, but once speed is involved, my internal workings shut down.

Not a happy morning anyway, as we were supposed to have a snow day and it was supposed to reach 15°C. I will never trust the weatherman again.

On a totally unrelated note, here's another reason to want to be an octopus (the first of which being that you can squeeze into any space that is larger than the size of your beak): You can eat sharks. Proof. Octopi rock.