Back in the days before the N'EX, a teaching colleague was coming to Tokyo for an international conference during one of my summertime stays. I gave him explicit instructions about how to catch the Keisei Skyliner and said that I would meet him at Keisei Ueno on the appointed day and accompany him to his hotel. I waited for three hours and finally gave up.
That evening, he called my gaijin house lodgings and asked why I hadn't met him. It turned out--and this was typical of his arrogant and stubborn nature--that he had gotten off the plane and, instead of following my instructions, had asked the nearest Japanese person for the train to Tokyo.
The Japanese person had directed him to take the slow train via Chiba, which landed him at Tokyo Station, where I could never have found him anyway.
This was the first of many misadventures, most notably when he wanted to have a purely Japanese meal and then got angry because the restaurant didn't have milk on hand for him to drink with the meal.
He was a most embarrassing person to interpret for, and I was glad to see him off on the Shinkansen to Kyoto.