Shinkansen - Be on TIME!

When my sister came to visit me when I was living in Japan, we decided to take a trip to Kyoto from Tokyo.  The quickest way to get there is by Shinkansen,  often referred to as the "bullet train" because it goes so fast.  It is a marvel to see how precise the Japanese are in ensuring their bullet trains leave exactly on time.  We got to the train station early because we knew that we needed to be exactly on time.  We grabbed some lunch and then had a little time to do some shopping.  If you have ever been in an underground train station in Japan, you will notice that everything starts looking the same after awhile.  Well, it was getting time to catch the train,  since there were no definite landmarks, I kind of got lost.  I finally remembered a store that was in the right direction we were to head and told my sister to RUN.  We were carrying our bags, since when you travel on the bullet trains there isn't very much space to store anything.  We RAN as fast as we could and jumped on the bullet train and just then, the doors closed.  I turned to my sister and happily said, "we made it".  Well, my sister was quite mad at me, her glasses were askew and her bag was wrapped awkwardly around her body.  That was her first experience riding on a Shinkansen.