We are out of shape and the ryōkan is up a winding hill so we take a taxi from the station. The driver is a venerable jiji, enclosed inside his clear plastic shield that’s retrofitted precisely to the interior of the car. I can’t remember if these shields only started cropping up because of COVID or if they’ve been doing it this way since long before.
In the slow waddling way of a toddler, I painstakingly read the loud Japanese brochures in the seat pockets, the cautionary signs and advertisement stickers on the windows and doors. Downtown Beppu abruptly thins out the higher we go, but steam from natural hot springs continues its picturesque billowing. It’s a small town and I see it quickly rush past, watermarked by multilingual reminders telling us we’re not supposed to manually open the left rear door.
The steep, curving hill is conquered like nothing, and with no regard for life. When the taxi stops in front of the ryōkan, a member of the hotel staff is already waiting to greet us. Gio gets out with our menial luggage, already engaging in small talk, while I sort out the taxi payment using my best-friend phrase: “Kādo de ii desu ka?”
More complicated than a shop, it seems, paying a taxi with a credit card. The driver takes out a card reader, punches out the fare, and inserts my card. Many beeping buttons and flickering messages of pixelated Japanese on the too-tiny screen later, he finally hands the reader to me and says something that’s completely swallowed by the face mask he’s wearing. Well, I’m not going to ask for eigo and betray the fact that I do not, in fact, speak Japanese all that well and that I am, in fact, a tourist. I hazard a guess, thinking that he said something along the lines of, “You can take your card now.” And so with feigned confidence, I pull out out the card.
Thus ends the short story on how I managed to exasperate a member of a race renowned for their extreme politeness. Sometimes my abilities baffle me.
TINY WORRIES 