The Last Train

Tomas looked at his phone and felt his stomach drop. It was twelve ten in the morning, and the station gates were closing. In Tokyo, the trains do not run all night. The last train on most lines leaves around midnight, and everyone in the city knows the exact time of theirs. Tomas, who had been in the country for four days, did not.

Tomas kiggede på sin telefon og mærkede maven synke. Klokken var tolv og ti om natten, og stationens porte var ved at lukke. I Tokyo kører togene ikke hele natten. Det sidste tog på de fleste linjer kører omkring midnat, og alle i byen kender det nøjagtige tidspunkt for deres eget. Tomas, som havde været i landet i fire dage, gjorde ikke.

A taxi across the city would cost more than his hotel room. A station worker saw his face and pointed down the street. There, between a convenience store and a noodle shop, glowed a sign for a capsule hotel. Tomas paid at a machine, took a locker key, and slept in a clean plastic pod the size of a single bed, in a quiet room full of other people who had also missed their trains.

En taxi tværs gennem byen ville koste mere end hans hotelværelse. En stationsmedarbejder så hans ansigt og pegede ned ad gaden. Der, mellem en døgnkiosk og en nudelbar, lyste et skilt for et kapselhotel. Tomas betalte ved en automat, tog en nøgle til et skab og sov i en ren plastikkapsel på størrelse med en enkeltseng, i et stille rum fuldt af andre mennesker, som også havde misset deres tog.

In the morning he bought coffee from a vending machine and took the first train home, fresh and slightly proud. Now he checks one thing before any evening out in Japan: not the menu, not the map, but the time of the last train.

Om morgenen købte han kaffe fra en automat og tog det første tog hjem, frisk og lidt stolt. Nu tjekker han én ting, før han går ud om aftenen i Japan: ikke menuen, ikke kortet, men tidspunktet for det sidste tog.