I had to go to a hospital miles and miles away from my home in Japan because the one in my town wasn’t equipped to run the tests I needed. So a friend drove me since the train would have taken hours, and we had to go through these dormant fields on a mostly dirt road. Nothing for miles as far as you could see except for grass and a river. Not even houses or anything. So, at some point as the sun’s rising, her car stalls. Right next to a soda vending machine. In the middle of a field. With no discernible power outlet or power lines or anything. But it’s on. No cell phone reception, either. We pop the hood and I look around, but neither of us know anything, and we’re worried because we haven’t seen another car or bicycle or scooter in ages.
We think we’re going to be stranded for a long time, so she buys a couple of canned coffees and we sit down in the car to drink them, and suddenly, the dash lights blink back on. We turn the car on, and it’s fine.
We get on our way, a little weirded out, and I say, “I’ve had a bizarre feeling the whole time we’ve been driving here. It makes sense now.”
And she says, “yeah, I’ll bet there was a spirit there. It wanted an offering, and then let us go. My mom said that can happen where there aren’t any other real shrines or temples around.”
So our liminal space demanded ￥400 before letting us through.
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