Page 4 of Little Miss Fortune

‘Please take it.’ He hands it to me; the plastic packaging crinkles in my hand.

‘I can’t accept it.’ I push it back.

‘Please.’

‘Let me pay.’

He wraps my hands around the amulet with a tight grip. ‘Listen to it. It will let you know when the winds are changing.’

The monk bows me away, and I walk back to the station. Small drips of rain start alleviating the humidity in the air, but the droplets are hot. You would never get warm rain in the UK, so I close my eyes and enjoy the feeling. However, by the time I reach the train station, it is torrential. It’s impossible to see what’s ahead, the thick veil making it hard to even lift my head.

Light rain, my ass.

I wait for about an hour, but no train comes despite the timetable’s promise. My teeth bite down on my quivering lip. I don’t mean to cry, I really don’t. But I just needed one thing to go right. One thing to show Mum that I’m not a total loser.

Tears continue as does the rain. I guess I will just have to stay here for the whole night.

A car stops by; a kind-looking woman shouts, ‘The trains are cancelled because of tsuyu. Are you local?’

Not anymore, I guess. ‘I am staying in a hotel in Toyama.’

‘You won’t get back to the city today, but let me drop you off at a ryokan.’

I wipe my nose. That’s what I remember about my childhood—the kindness that the locals showed towards everyone. My bow to her is filled with genuine gratitude.

A traditional Japanese garden with round layered trees guards the entrance of the hotel. The building’s white panelled walls are evenly cut through by thin dark wood planks, both horizontally and vertically. The shiny kawara roof tiles glisten like metal shields in the rain. The round tiles in the corners of the eaves have an engraved flower, the crest of the family that used to control this region of Japan. This place must be very old to have those. I knock on the door of the traditional ryokan.

An old man opens it. Looks at me for three seconds and shouts, ‘No gaijins.’

Maybe I spoke too soon of the kindness. Living in a tight-knit community with a respected mother-sensei and a father who embraced the culture fully, I was never called a gaijin before. Gaijin is a term for foreigners, used only in a derogatory sense, for those rare occasions where no other words can describe one’s frustration with the slight deviation from the status quo.

But I didn’t do shit. I just look semi-white.

‘I am not a gaijin. I am half Japanese,’ I plead, but he can’t hear me over the closed door that he shut in my face.

My heart stings so much that I feel as if I’m about to burst with laughter. I guess that’s that—this old man just confirmed that I do not belong here. That I don’t belong anywhere. I am about to walk back to the station when the door opens up again.

‘Dear customer, I am sorry. My father has’—she says a word that I’ve actually never heard before but assume means dementia—‘and these days, he remembers too much of the war. Please, come in.’

My shoes are left by the door as I stand in the corridor. Two young girls cover me in towels, wiping the trail of water drops I brought in. The smell of powerful incense fills the air. Does the ryokan share a supplier with the shrine up the road?

‘We have an onsen.’ The hostess, in a traditional kimono, smiles and points down the corridor. ‘Today, the one on the right is for women. The one on the left is for men. Tomorrow, it will change. Please enjoy it as I prepare your room.’

I bow and head straight to the bath on the right. The two girls bring me a heated drying rack to hang my clothes on, unfazed by my nakedness. The room is steamed up and smells of sulphur—a sign of a natural hot spring. Before entering the bath, I sit down on a low chair and wash myself with the provided shower gel, shampoo, and treatment, which is what they call conditioner here. For a second, I catch myself in the mirror. Yeesh, what a sorry sight—bags under the eyes, tired skin. Soap lathers over the eighteen BCG scars on my left arm from a vaccine stamp, a physical reminder of my Japanese upbringing. I let the mirror steam over again, putting all of my attention into washing off all the suds and tying my hair up to ensure that the water in the onsen stays clean. When my skin squeaks from cleanliness, I submerge myself in the rotenburo—outside bath. The hot water flushes over me.

I let my head rest on the smooth rocks as the rain melodically hits against the half of the pool that is not covered. A water chain on the side of the building is letting the stream wrap itself around the upside bells, leading it to the drain on the ground. Despite the violent nature of the rainy season, being here on my own is calming. Even makes me forget my immediate failure to achieve even the smallest of my personal goals.

We used to go to a public bath with my mother and sister. She would challenge us to jump in the cold-water bath and stay there until she finished counting to ten but would purposefully slow down when she got to seven.

‘It’s good for your body,’ she would say, laughing.

The covered wind chimes sway in the gust of wind, bringing me back to the present. My pruney toes and fingers and the world that spins for a moment when I stand agree—I have sat in the hot water for too long.

This has been a good rest stop. If I just keep going, my stubbornness might eventually overpower my bad luck.

So for old time’s sake, and to balance out my body temperature, I take a plunge in the cold bath. My skin pricks up, locking in the blood vessels. I count, slowing down when I get to seven. Hearing the door opening from the changing room and someone’s feet travelling across the wet floor, I rise. The water drips off my body.

‘Oh, fuck,’ a man’s voice bellows at me. In English.