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The Keihin-Tōhoku line runs side by side with the Yamanote line and today it is running four seconds behind the Yamanote line, so I keep seeing the same people across the platform at each stop as we pull in. After the train stops the doors open, it is suddenly quiet, and we stare at each other across the platform divide. We participate in parallel in a series of meetings every two minutes and forty-five seconds. That woman in the front car keeps patting her forehead with a handkerchief and delicately blotting away the perspiration. She has repeatedly done it at each of the past three stations since Yūrakuchō. Normally that is me, the one with the rising temperature in the perpetually steaming train cars, but now for some reason it is not. Maintaining a four second lead on the Yamanote must prompt overheating.