For Your Saké

For inveterate travellers who’ve got a cache of anecdotes drawn from unplanned adventures they’ve had with previous Airbnb hosts, the notion of curated ‘experiences’ may seem contrived. On the contrary, MERAJ SHAH explores the rationale that there might be reason to letting them ‘set you up.’

- Meraj Shah

I’m mortified of unwittingly offending someone,” I murmur surreptitiously to Joan. The two of us are seated next to each other on the ‘Romancecar’— a defining sobriquet for a class of trains in Japan that, scandalously, lack armrests to sequester passengers on the twin-seats. Japan can make the first-time visitor feel like an unsettled pretender to culture; I talk softly— gaze directed steadfastly at the overhead sign instructing passengers to ‘…please go to the vestibule if you need to take a phone call.’ The whisper in her ear becomes a storm, and scythes through the icy silence of the fully-packed compartment; heads turn in subdued alarm towards the interloper. I cringe, horrified at my transgression—like a parvenu, exposed in plain sight, whose discordant utterance has decimated the Zen-like meditative cadence of the journey; uncharitably roused the good folk out of profound reveries. Now they’ll just have to start all over again. What a boor.