Hey Dick!
When the lines aren't running, there's not much you can do except hound the station staff as to when they'll be back up and in all probability, they don't know. As I was in Shinjuku meeting with someone concerning the mag, I had my laptop so I exited the station and tried to find a hotpoint to be able to post to the board. Failing that, I walked around and tried to piggyback off the first wireless network I could find. That didn't work either.
I ended up finding a little Taiwanese home-cooking restaurant and settled myself down in there for about an hour and a half and ate dinner and read. Going back to the JR station (Japan Rail, not our esteemed poster having the same initials
), it seems that my line was down for the night. I walked around the station to get to the other side (anyone who's ever been to Shinjuku can sympathize what a task that is, as there's no direct path
through the station, you have to walk around it to get to the other side...and it's massive!) looking for subway lines that were still running. I struck gold at the third station, and proceeded along a very serpentine route home. What should have taken an hour ended up taking almost 5, but I was nonetheless just happy to be home.
The other option was to wait for a taxi. By my estimate, the queue was approaching 1,000 persons and I didn't feel like waiting over an hour for the privilege of paying a high fare to get home.
On the bright side...I certainly got my exercise that day!
