Weird Things (That You Brought Back From a Trip) / Micah Donahue

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The Crazy Japanese Train

We received all kinds of souvenirs, knickknacks and bric-a-brac for the Send Us Your Weird Things (That You Brought Back From a Trip) Contest. We will post some of the many submissions here and the winning entry will be published in Issue 6.

I was on the craziest business trip I ever expect to take. My startup-branding firm had been hired by the then Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs as marketing consultants. Our mission involved gathering global intel and ideas on how the administration could raise international public opinion of the USA’s global climate change efforts. (Clearly, marketing this story would prove to be a serious challenge, given our disproportionate per capita resources consumption.)

 

On our last leg of the trip, en route from Delhi to Chicago (via Dhaka, Singapore, and Tokyo), we stopped for a few blissful hours in Tokyo. Despite it being my first visit, we never left the airport due to some trivial, pesky visa issue.

 

So we went exploring. I knew as soon as I saw the manga-inspired bullet train that it’d be a hit with my 3-year-old son, Max. Thomas and Percy, go to hell. What I didn’t know is that 3 years later, the “crazy Japanese train” as we call it continues to fascinate, mostly because it makes spontaneous wild proclamations (in Japanese, of course) at all hours of the day and night. More than once I’ve jumped out of bed to these voices, expecting to face a ninja in business class.

 

So for its sheer weirdness, for the love Max has for it, and most of all for the memories of that wild ride–the crazy Japanese train abides.

 

Micah Donahue is the Principal/Contact Strategy Director of M E C H A N I C A.

Keep an eye on Nowheremag.com for the Issue 6 release this month. Send submissions to Nowhere here.

 

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