Snake On A Train!

If you’re from the UK, you’ve probably heard the old ‘leaves on the line’ excuse for when trains were late. (Although, it turns out that it’s not an excuse at all.)

Pah. In Japan, when a train is late, they pull out a far better book of excuses. (Although there was that one about wind when I went to Fujisaka that I couldn’t fully understand.)

A snake got into a railway company transmission substation in Wakayama Prefecture causing power lines to short-circuit Saturday morning, resulting in the cancellation of 12 train runs and stranding about 350 passengers for a couple of hours.

Original story - CrissCross

The snake turned out to be a rat snake, once its electrocuted body had been obtained. I have no idea what that is, but this might be it. No reports yet on whether or not the snake was on a suicide mission, lost, or had just misinterpreted the vibrations from the train as a particularly big rat he could eat.

I wish I could work from home. Outside is scary.

Saturday, June 17th, 2006 Japan, Japanese News Trackback URL for this entry