Not the least part of Odakyū travel has to be the Fare Adjustment Machine. Seisan ki. You underpaid for your ticket – the upshot is that if you put it in the automatic gate the warning-ping goes off with a small red light flashing. So, a quick sidestep to the FAM (as it might be called). In goes your ticket. Excess price shows up on the screen. Due money is inserted. Out comes another ticket which will do the trick. You then exit from the station, un-troubled, un-guilty, and with quite none of the grief that can follow with a Western ticket office or inspector. Every station in the world should have one. Every home should have one.

Roof-top vistas en route from Mukōgaoka-yūen. The train rides high, and through the window or door window-panel, you get to see upper-level Kanagawa housing. Four items. First, just after Chitose-Funabashi, there's HORIZON CHAPEL in bold green lettering. Heaven's Gate Odakyū? Second, near Kyodo, DOVER HOTEL. Is it a love-hotel, a business hotel, even a left-over sign a la Gatsby? Third, KONAMI SPORTS CLUB just before Shimo-Kitazawa, with a swimming pool as main feature. There you are on the crowded morning train, barely awake, eyes half-open, and you see someone mid-air doing the likes of an Olympic double-twist. Fourth, the JAMII MOSQUE, within hailing distance of Shinjuku, high white minaret and dome golden in the light – nice contrast with each Buddhist or Shinto temple spire. Built, I discover, by Turkish Muslims in the 1930s, demolished in 1986, and handsomely rebuilt and opened in 2000. It is early morning and the mind wanders. Can this still be Odakyū Japan?

Sweet sight. School-aged couple, both in school uniform, sharing white ear-plugs for an iPod, an MP3 player. They look like they are joined by some Y-shaped umbilical stethoscope. You can just about hear it is J-pop (or even, as of late, J-hop), and not least as they both make a slight sway to the rhythm. Lots of eye-gazing. Obviously early passion, love. Discreet. Japanese-style. Off they get at Noborito, ear-to-ear and one white wire for each.