Apart from three people, and a person reading a book, the commuters of the several dozen strong carriage swipe and slash and tap their tablets and phones.
Their benches, coated in that 1970s, bold orange fabric, shows wear, in the form of backsides and middlebacks; the imprints of a million people and more, all having sat in the same way; all having travelled in the same direction.
Perhaps here, in this arterial chamber of the nation’s heart, the fading seats of the subway, and the dimples in the glass, are the truest way to tell the time.
It’s dark outside.
Or at least it should be, for the sun has been replaced by incandescent kanji; the birds overruled by the howls of the braking train; the rice paddies of Joetsu City replaced by pachinko parlours, keeping the souls of it’s denziens bloated; the trees have morphed into concrete condos, and their branches and roots and leaves into rivers of telegraph cables and coils.
The train is busier now.
But somehow, it has become quieter.
The scratch of my pen against my pad is the loudest sound in the carriage.
I look around and wonder:
What things do these people look at on their screens?
What zeitgeist makes them smirk, and what friend makes them grin?
What are their hopes and are they getting closer to them?
Many people are asleep.
I take note of my capsule.
The ceiling is grey, though at least, it’s a lighter shade than the floor. One could easily mistake it for a gymnast’s studio: I struggle to count the number of white rings that the commuter’s dangle from.
The clean, grey blinds are drawn in each window, perhaps, the strip lights, unblinking, uncased, push to the limit the occupants’ daily exposure- any more artificial rays upon their skin would surley turn them to mist.
Interspersed between the lights are a line of twenty or so adverts- the one closest to me, advertises Asahi beer, and has two parts.
‘Be like me!’ it screams.
The first half shows a pair of salarymen shouting kanpai, and chinking their bottles, whilst the second half has a close up of one of the men, wearing a chequered shirt. Perhaps he’s laughing, or screaming, it’s impossible to tell.
I am a long way from home
Japan and Me 