Oita Kotsu is a jerky, jerking, jerkfaced, stupid mean bus company.

since my usual carpool buddy is enjoying her public holiday, i decided to be eco-ma-logical and take the train and the bus to school. also, one of these days parking in Visitor is going to cost me my scholarship, my firstborn child and perhaps even my mortal soul.

(completely irrelevant side note: my classmates are at the moment analyzing the correlation between one's creepiness and thickness of moustache.)

anyway, i left at a very reasonable time and took the perfectly nice and punctual train from Oita to Kamegawa. about 10 or 15 others got off the train with me to catch the bus to the university. we arrived at the stop and...

the driver made a little shit-eating grin of glee as he stepped on the accelerator, leaving us in a cloud of diesel exhaust. there must have been about 5 people on the bus who couldn't possibly wait 30 seconds for us to board.

everyone started messaging on their cell phones, informing their classmates or coworkers that they would be a bit late. not by much though, as another bus was coming in 5 minutes...

the 8:45 pulled into the stop, let off one passenger, and...

"[static and snigger] sorry, the bus is full so we can't pick you up. You'll never get to school on time, DICKHEADS!! AHAHAHAHAAAA!!!"

The young (British? Aussie? Kiwi?) professor hailed a taxi. the rest of us poor bastards not getting paid to be at our destinations swore under our breaths.

now, if it were just me getting dicked over by the bus it would be an unfortunate bout of bad luck. and a shitty start to the day. but no, it was a good 12-ish people who would be late to work or school because of this infernally atrocious excuse for a god-awful bus company. and the real kicker here is the bus line is actually losing money through these stupidly inefficient schedules and failure to coordinate with the much more reliable train schedule. so i can only conclude that:

1.) Oita Kotsu has a virtual monopoly on transport from the city centre to the university, and therefore can get away with charging extortionist prices for absolutely shite service, and
2.) the staff gets a genuine kick out of fucking around anyone affiliated with their biggest customer.

seriously, this is why people give up on public transport and use combustion engines with something like 30% efficiency to get to wherever it is they want to go and kill the earth. which is why Oita Kotsu bus is a jerky jerking jerkface stupid mean bus company.