Sometimes, the most trivial mistakes have the most severe consequences. Ducked behind the sign to shield his camera from the sun, Mark was trying to line up the perfect picture of the beautiful valley. This would make a great cover for his photo album from this month-long solo trip through Japan.
Just as his camera snapped, so did the doors of the train. Mark whirled around, running towards the tiny, single carriage, but it had already started to depart the station. He started yelling and waving - he certainly didn’t want to be left behind and spend hours until the next train on a rather boring concrete platform, great view or not. The train was short, the platform straight, the engineer would probably notice, and … as the train accelerated into the distance, Mark realized he had been forgotten.
The first thing he noticed was that unlike any other train station, there was not a single bench. Of course not - nobody was expected to stay here for more than the few minutes it took them to take in the view, and take pictures.
After a few more minutes of enjoying the view, he took off his backpack, stuffed his camera inside, finished his water bottle, ate an apple he had taken from the hotel earlier and vented his frustration through an unobserved act of defiance to the Japanese culture by throwing the apple core as far as he could into the pristine water below.
The view got boring. He did what most of us do when our brain tries to displace boredom, and grabbed his phone. The Wikipedia page of the station that he had looked up on the way here was still open, and one sentence grabbed his attention: “The station will only be served by special trains.”
The next thing that grabbed his attention was the complete lack of cell service.
He remembered the hours-long ride through untouched, unpopulated nature.
His slow pacing along the station turned more rapid, and the look on his face slowly turned from annoyance to worry.
Mark was shaking. 10 °C at night, as the weather app on his phone was showing next to “failed to refresh weather data”, doesn’t sound too bad - but for someone wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, sleeping on concrete with a thin rain jacket for a blanket, it is very cold.
This was not fun at all. He hoped there would be a second train in the morning. He didn’t want to be stuck here until the afternoon. 15:42 was the time his train had arrived here yesterday, and at 15:57, with Japanese punctuality, it had left him behind.
He was thirsty, but the crystal-clear water was 20 meters down a steep, featureless concrete embankment. No safe way down, and definitely no way back up.
The train had been small, but it did show the speed on the way here. 120 km/h. Mark opened the ticket from the downloads folder of his phone. The train had departed exactly at noon. Three hours and forty-two minutes, that’s 222 minutes at a speed of two kilometers per minute, minus a bit for the time it took the train to accelerate… he was about 440 kilometers away from civilization.
Watching the sunrise, it dawned him that the train had gone back in the same direction it came from. This was a single track railroad. With an almost eight-hour round trip, it made no sense for a second train to visit the station in the morning - it would have to depart in the middle of the night to be back before the train that brought him here departed. And just past the station, the train track leading in the opposite direction showed a layer of rust, with no marks indicating any recent use. He’d be here at least until the afternoon.
Checking the ticket, he noticed some Japanese text that contained numbers. He didn’t speak Japanese, but he had downloaded the language pack at the airport on the way to Japan. With his half-frozen hands, selecting and copying the tiny text was surprisingly difficult, but he managed to paste it into the Translate app.
Only valid for a single return journey on the special train service on February 1, March 15, April 30, June 15, August 1, or September 15.
Worry turned to panic as he realized that this was not just a minor inconvenience, and the next train would not be here in a few hours, or even days. He was stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no way out, no way to call for help, and nobody to notice his disappearance for at least three more weeks.
He had no food, no water, barely any clothing, and the station provided almost no shelter from the elements. The first rainstorm nearly killed him, but it also allowed him to fill his water bottle with the runoff from the station roof, which he carefully rationed.
Where the concrete embankment ended, it was replaced with an even steeper cliff blocking access to the lake below, as far as he could see. His exploration into the forest - severely limited by his quickly dwindling energy - showed either endless wilderness or impassable terrain, with no easily recognizable edible plants and not a single source of water.
Sleeping on a primitive bed made from twigs and leaves from the nearby forest, Mark survived sixteen grueling nights on the platform, until he was rescued on February 17, severely dehydrated, on the brink of starvation, with scratches that had become severely infected, and several other injuries that we shall not mention here.
His ingenuity and sheer luck had saved him, as he had managed to signal a small plane flying over the area by using the screen of his empty cell phone as a signalling mirror. He spent nearly two weeks recovering in the Tokyo General hospital before he was stable enough to be repatriated on a medevac flight.
Others were not so lucky.
So, while I encourage you to visit this beautiful station, do not miss the train back.