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 je pogledao mobitel i osjetio kako mu se želudac steže. Bilo je dvanaest i deset ujutro, a vrata postaje se zatvarala. U Tokiju vlakovi ne voze cijelu noć. Posljednji vlak na većini linija polazi oko ponoći, i svatko u gradu zna točno vrijeme svog vlaka. Tomas, koji je u zemlji bio tek četiri dana, nije znao.

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.

Taksi kroz grad koštao bi više od njegove hotelske sobe. Djelatnik postaje primijetio je njegovo lice i pokazao niz ulicu. Ondje, između trgovine i restorana s rezancima, svijetlio je znak kapsulskog hotela. Tomas je platio na automatu, uzeo ključ ormarića i spavao u čistoj plastičnoj kapsuli veličine jednog kreveta, u tihoj prostoriji punoj drugih ljudi koji su također propustili svoje vlakove.

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.

Ujutro je kupio kavu iz automata i uhvatio prvi vlak kući, odmoran i pomalo ponosan. Sada, prije svakog izlaska navečer u Japanu, provjerava jednu stvar: ne jelovnik, ne kartu, nego vrijeme posljednjeg vlaka.