135

Walking the back route down narrow streets to Ōji Station, I pass the house with the orange tree where I once heard somebody playing guitar. I stop and listen for the sounds of any strumming or the sounds of someone thinking about strumming, but there is nothing except silence and the smell of January cold. Then, a vending machine next to me suddenly glows and whirs to life, providing me with a ghostly consolation prize in the possibility of hot beverages. A quick nod of acknowledgment to the machine for its attempt to communicate across the gulf that separates inanimate and animate matter, and I am off towards the park with the miniature fence with a touch keypad lock.

Waiting for me at the entrance to the park, just past the tangle of telephone wires, is a small convention of people with compact dogs wearing winter clothing. One of the dogs—appearing like four uneasy sticks attached to a small sweater—looks about 18% gray and beautifully matches the sky. If I picked up the dog and hurled it into the air, it would abruptly vanish, only to remind us of its presence by the snapping sound of its landing. Across the park heading east, I consider leaping over the fence as I near it, but I speculate about what I will feel once I am on the other side. I might not want to return to where I jumped from or be unable to. It seems that it would be reasonably easy to hop over, but this might be an illusion, some diabolical method of falsely inflating intruder confidence, then snaring them mid-vault. The fact of its impossible smallness only serves to heighten the unknown threat of how it operates. What this fence lacks in height, it more than makes up through fiendishly confusing psychology. I pause for a moment and consider that the rate at which my body ages and shrinks is not so fast to keep me from a potential crossing on my way home from the café. I acknowledge the holding pattern, and I am off.

First, I run over to see that the golfers are busy golfing—and they are—but I am disappointed that the skateboarders are not skateboarding. Wouldn't it be nice if I could hear the bark of their skateboard trucks across concrete curbs and pedestrian handrails in the parking lot? Nevertheless, it is empty, and even if they had only recently departed, it is now impossible to see even the faintest trace of their breath in the air. I hear the sharp claps of clubs hitting balls and the dull thuds of balls hitting nets, but no wheels intermittently crackling and gliding across the tarmac. I circle the parking lot in a holding pattern of my exhalation until an unexpected squawk from a crow atop a garbage can, followed by a quick ding-ding from the nearby Toden Arakawa Line, punctuates the late afternoon and signals that it is time for a warm coffee.

Once inside the nearby café, I am struck, as usual, by the complete lack of separation between the smoking and non-smoking sections. The curls of smoke drift above the masked customers and the waning plants in the center of the circular smoking table, forming sheets of gray cloud cover. I slowly lift my 18% gray card into the haze above our heads, and it promptly vanishes. However, when I lower my arm again, it materializes, and I make a snapping sound accompanied by a whine that catches the attention of the schoolgirl 72% napping at the table next to mine

115

The yellow warning stickers on the Tokyo Metropolitan Subway doors depicting a highly distressed cat with its tail stuck in the door have been replaced by stickers of a masked raccoon and its pup pointing at the closing door. Upon first inspection the stylized violence seems to have been replaced with a more sober cautionary lesson; however, upon closer scrutiny one notices that there is a large, severed human hand in-between the closing doors that they are pointing towards. They must be enjoying the spectacle of human dismemberment because I detect the slightest hint of a smile in their masked faces. The explosive red graphic sited at the severed wrist is truly gruesome. Quadrupedalism trumps bipedalism. At first I missed the traumatized cat whose eyes practically popped out of its sockets enough to reveal the sinewy nerve, but now I have been won over by the ingeniously encoded horror. Unfortunately, I don't have a tail, so I will have to put my forearm in the door to see if what they are warning me against really is as extreme as I am told.

113

The entire Akihabara Station platform smells of butter. Is there a “Beard Papa’s” cream puff store nearby venting baking aromas into the station at a high velocity? Suddenly I am pulled from my olfactory reverie – or is it horror – when I see a man accidentally drop his wallet. I call out to him to inform him of the situation and he is both startled and thankful. I could have a delicate sandwich with the crust cut off to celebrate the encounter and successful maintenance of his financial situation, but I go for a louder culinary statement, order curry rice and inexplicably receive a plate of fatty meat. Recently in the town of Onomichi I found another wallet and brought it into a nearby store. The owner was also startled and thankful (who knows if it was even his wallet). I could have had a delicious bowl of piping hot Onomichi noodles to celebrate the encounter, but yet again I went for a bolder statement and in a nearby alley I had an impromptu staring contest with a medium sized, yellowish brown cat. Why does the mascot for “Beard Papa” look like the author Ernest Hemmingway, or the Gorton's Fisherman from packages of frozen fish when he is from Osaka? Is there a relationship between weathered old men, beards, the sea, fishing, luscious cream puffs, and the inadvertent jettisoning of personal wealth?

104

My pen is beautiful. My beautiful pen is orange. My orange Naoto Fukasawa designed Lamy pen. My Naoto Fukasawa designed model 282 orange – Lamy noto Ballpoint pen is a triangular thing of beauty to behold. The pen profile looks just like the San'yō Shinkansen (bullet train) that I am riding on towards Onomichi. The resolution of the pen clip problem is elegant and deeply, shockingly satisfying. I love looking at it as much as I like using it to trace rocks into my notebooks, but most of all, right now, I love holding it up against the window and imagining that there is a very special, one car, orange Shinkansen in the distance that is traveling in parallel at 285 km/h. My pen is a speedy little mikan.

102

The cats in Takinogawa always stop what they are doing and watch me as I run past them. On the densely packed 00:32 JST Yamanote train from Shinjuku heading north towards Tabata, two girls only inches away have hair so sculpted that it looks as if they have poodles attached to the tops of their heads. The poodles are looking at me and I half expect to hear a snarl, or perhaps get licked. Two kids to my right in-between the train cars are singing loudly, encouraging each other to increasingly higher levels of raucousness and physically pushing each other in a playful way. They momentarily stop, turn, look at me, tentatively smile, then continue on with a heightened ardor. Somebody gently sobbing amongst the sleeping passengers, or throwing up would round out the scenario nicely with the full range of emotions. Once while sitting on a late night Yamanote train from Shinjuku I saw the terrified woman in front of me suddenly cover her drunk boyfriend’s mouth with her hand, forcing him to swallow the vomit that he was trying to evacuate from his system. The last train from Shinjuku often feels like a space suddenly shifting back and forth between comedy and horror, and it would seem equally as plausible if the train was rolling down the tracks upside down. The last Yamanote train from Shinjuku is one of my favorite places to spend time.

87

The woman across from me on the Yamanote line took out her notebook and pen and started writing at the same time that I did. Her pen was also blue. I reflect on this. I wonder if she will put her notebook away at the same time I close my notebook? She didn’t. She put her notebook away before me, but it looks like she is thinking about taking it out again. I remain on the train three extra stops to see if this will happen. It doesn't. I get off the train at Ebisu station and as the train doors close, as the Hatsumelo theme from The Third Man plays, I cover my eyes tightly with both my hands and wish for her to take out her notebook again and write notes. The train pulls away and I sense a notebook emerging from the darkness of a bag and the possibility of a pen pressing into soft paper, leaving a line, as well as an indentation.

86

Long golden fingertips on the Yamanote line are precisely tap-tap-tapping black jack cards on my left and delirious PlayStation playing is positioned to my right. Somewhere in-between these two descriptions is a precocious child in Monte Carlo playing Baccarat.

85

On the Seibu-Shinjuku line on my way to Araiyakushimae the door opens at Shimo-Ochiai station and everything becomes quiet. It is as if the theater curtains have been drawn and the performance is about to begin. I see three kids in matching tracksuits practicing synchronized dance moves that they are copying from a video playing on a cell phone. They finish their routine, the doors close, and we pull away. I begin to invisibly, loudly clap in appreciation of their routine.

82

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.

80

Trains departing from Ōji station initially make a slight complaining sound, the same sound you hear when you wake a cat that has been sleeping.

77

Three days ago while transferring from the Yamanote line to the Seibu-Shinjuku line at Takadanobaba, in a city of almost thirteen million people, I ran into someone I know. Sudo Takaki was wearing headphones and leaning against the seat next to the door opposite from the side of the train I was standing on. I watched him bobbing his head to sounds potentially playing in his headphones and studied his shockingly total lack of expression as he stared out the window. His confusion was palpable after I tapped his shoulder, smiled, and silently mouthed the word こんにちは (konnichiwa - hello) as I exited the train onto the platform.

70

From this spot facing west in the parking lot near the giant bowling pin in front of Ōji Station I can see the Toden Arakawa trolley, the Keihin-Tōhoku commuter train, the Shinkansen bullet train, a freight railway, city buses, cars, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, and people walking. I can’t see the Namboku subway line, but I sense its vibrations under my feet. Also, the two skateboarders are to my left creating an intermittent racket. Ōji is Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy Town, but without a personable worm as of yet. Soon a charming guide will materialize.

68

Last night I heard the click-clacking of high heels again, "どですかでんどですかでん (dodesukaden)." There was a slight pause, then click-clacking at an intensified volume and rate. It could have been someone who suddenly remembered something then set off in a new direction towards an alternate, more pressing future, or it could have been an exceptionally volatile and naughty trolley that strayed from its normal route.

57

The embankments of the Shakujii gawa occasionally have ventilation shafts for the Tokyo Metro Namboku subway line, so as I run along the river I often hear the clacking of wheels and have the impression of trains moving in parallel with us. If the ventilation shafts are not for the Metro, then phantom trains definitely exist in Takinogawa.

44

どですかでん、どですかでん、どですかでん。。。(Dodesukaden). In onomatopoeic terms, dodesukaden is the sound of a moving trolley. Also, sometimes, the sound of click-clacking heels. Also, the name of Akira Kurosawa's 1970 film set in a Japanese garbage dump and a failure that almost drove him to kill himself.

43

Take an advertisement from a country that is not your own, reverse the tones in the image, and then mull over the details. My conclusion is as follows: meanwhile, there is an uneasy entente cordiale between penguins and robots in the netherworld where SUICA and PASMO exist. PASMO the robot roller skates over and presents an olive branch in the form of an 18% gray card to SUICA the penguin who is standing with its right flipper raised as if holding a 0% gray card in the night. The half purple, half 0% gray card in the penguin's left flipper is possibly for measuring things beyond the comprehension of those outside these infernal regions. This vignette could alternately be taking place in the depths of the undersea world, which would account for the penguin's luminescence. If this is the situation, then perhaps Utis, or Nobody would be more appropriate names for both of our characters rather than SUICA and PASMO. Are we, the spectators, presumably in a bathysphere?

Bottom image: Captain Nemo observing a giant octopus from the viewing port of the submarine Nautilus, in Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. (Courtesy of NOAA Photo Library.)

40

I am considering my “SUICA” transportation smart card sitting in front of me on the counter table. The Super Urban Intelligent Card (SUICA) brings together images, concepts, and references to watermelons, integrated circuits, and ease. The card is poetic compression in a rectangle. Of course one joy is that it makes travel effortless, but it is the penguin mascot possessing both cuteness, as well as the fortitude to travel long distances that really makes it so extraordinary and poignant. SUICA adds a touch of the epic to your routine commute.

27

It turns out that the Ebisu Hasumelo for the Yamanote actually IS the theme from the Carol Reed’s film The Third Man. I can’t believe that I stumbled into being correct. Very much like the film's bumbling quasi-protagonist Holly Martins.

20

Please, come in to this one cubic yard dumpster, as today's runny, drippy garbage is tomorrow's desiccated and priceless archaeological find. From my current perspective in immaculately clean 2-32-10 Takinogawa, Kita-ku, Brooklyn strikes me as a place that is sending out a confused message, although I do admit that I have a love for garbage dumpsters. Actually, I have been inside of a three cubic yard dumpster full of trash and it was much more spacious than I thought it would be. Also, the smell was not nearly as repulsive as I expected and I wasn't even wearing a face mask. Unfortunately, I didn't find what I had accidentally thrown away into the dumpster only hours earlier. This lead me to think that possibly there was a tunnel connecting the dumpster to an alternate world of puppet sanitation workers and puppet archaeologists working side by side to decide what will be considered valuable in the future. What a lovely, precise broadcast that would be.

16

A northern station of the Toden Arakawa line – one of the last of the chin-chin (ding-ding) streetcars – is Ōji-eki-mae Station right next to where I am presently staying. In 2005 I lived in Higashi-Nippori next to the Minowabashi Station, the southern terminus of the line. A trolley that goes “ding-ding” connects my worlds of past and present not entirely dissimilar to the American television children's show host Mr. Rogers’ trolley; however, the Toden Arakawa line doesn't connect the world of Mr. Roger's living room through a mysterious tunnel with an imaginary land notable for its puppets and actual puppet monarchy, but connects two physical locations that are coincidental with my past and present. Also, the Toden Arakawa doesn't operate with the accompaniment of Mr. Rogers’ trolley's somewhat maniacal theme song. When I was a child the cycling "chugging along" relentlessness of Mr. Roger's trolley's song's rhythm always triggered a vague awareness of the inevitable forward movement of time. The Toden Arakawa doesn't have this precise effect on me, rather when I am on the Toden Arakawa I always think about Mr. Roger's trolley, how much I liked the soothing nature of the program, what a long time ago that was, and so in an elliptical manner it has the same effect, but minus the musical accompaniment. Aside from that and the evident absence of puppets on the Toden Arakawa the two trolleys seem to be more or less the same.