Odakyū train skills, especially on the Local or Semi-Express, or Section Semi-Express, require that you get to know which side to stand on if you want to avoid being buffeted at every stop. You need to be on the side that is opposite to the one where the door opens. If, then, you can wedge yourself into the niche between the handrail and that door, you can prevent getting pushed about. A bit like everyone aiming to get the end seat so you have only one passenger next to you. The rules of carriage ‘military’ engagement, as it were. You have to be on the top of your game, train-stop savvy. Odakyū travel tactics. Odakyū seatsmanship.

Gō tokuji through to Seijo, on the way home. It is time for the male equivalent of the New York bag lady. A slightly shabby type, raincoat grease-spotted, he hurtles through the carriage, scouring each overhead rack. He is on a MANGA-HUNT. A train ferret. Two heavy carrier bags bear his paper loot for the day. Quite imperturbable. Single in focus. Eyes keen. He discards the odd newspaper, the odd bits of publicity, but reaches up for anything akin to a book-story. Odakyū 's own literary spot-trader? An updated version of the Victorian novelist's ‘Dear Reader’? Who knows? 40%, of all published material in Japan, I learn, is manga.

Mukōgaoka-yūen south-to-north level crossing. Two trains momentarily poised at the stations, one Shinjuku-bound, the other Enoshima-bound. The barriers are raised high as we head across. Just in front of me I see a fairly sizeable Japanese man pushing his bike. He is wearing jeans, sneakers, and a burgundy-coloured jacket with the word ARMAGEDDON in large black capital letters. You look at the two trains, ready-to-go tensile metal, likely to make the level crossing bump some as they heave out of the station, and you have to think ‘warning’. The gods indeed. Touchstone Pictures indeed. Possible Armageddon indeed. Nothing if not train and rail-track Wagner.