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 melihat ponselnya dan merasa perutnya bergejolak. Jam menunjukkan pukul dua belas sepuluh pagi, dan gerbang stasiun sudah mulai ditutup. Di Tokyo, kereta tidak beroperasi sepanjang malam. Kereta terakhir di sebagian besar jalur berangkat sekitar tengah malam, dan semua orang di kota tahu persis jadwal kereta mereka. Tomas, yang baru empat hari berada di negara ini, tidak tahu.

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.

Naik taksi melintasi kota akan lebih mahal daripada tarif kamar hotelnya. Seorang petugas stasiun melihat wajahnya yang kebingungan dan menunjuk ke arah jalan. Di sana, di antara sebuah toko serba ada dan kedai mi, ada papan nama hotel kapsul yang bersinar. Tomas membayar di mesin, mengambil kunci loker, dan tidur di dalam pod plastik bersih seukuran tempat tidur tunggal, di ruangan tenang yang penuh dengan orang lain yang juga ketinggalan kereta mereka.

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.

Pagi harinya, ia membeli kopi dari mesin penjual otomatis dan naik kereta pertama pulang, merasa segar dan sedikit bangga. Sekarang, sebelum pergi keluar di malam hari di Jepang, ia selalu memeriksa satu hal: bukan menu, bukan peta, tetapi jadwal kereta terakhir.