En route to Mukōgaoka-yūen, walking along the road one tier down from the arterial main road, or dori (Fuchu-Kaido), that runs parallel and also crosses over the Odakyū rail-track. Cross-over bridge steps just ahead. There suddenly heaves into view a truck carrying a section of aircraft fusillage. Square passenger windows. Nose-cone. Wing fixtures. Something of a rare, certainly unexpected, sight. But it fits perfectly into an Odakyū travel-frame – foot passenger, train, track, bicycle (as stored under Fuchu Kaido) and plane. A day later some kind of refrigeration-truck comes with the words ‘Fixed temperature circulation system of the highest refreshment’. Quite.

Cam o’n. The Vietnamese for ‘Thank You’ would not necessarily first come to mind in connection with the Odakyū . But a visit to the Vietnamese Consulate in Yoyogi-Hachiman for a brief trip to Ho Chi Minh City led to overhearing the phrase at the station. Which, in turn, connects to other overheard bits of Odakyū foreign language. Hellos mainly. Nih hao from a group of Chinese students. Sawasdee from a Thai businessman. Namaste from a Nepali chef (in whitesmock embroidered with cooking pot). Once a Frenchman asked ‘C’est la ligne Chuo?’ ‘Non, Monsieur’, I came back, proprietary to a fault, ‘C’est la ligne Odakyū’. Ma ligne I might have added. Tokyo, however international in an evident sense, is actually not quite as international as New York, London or Paris. But it is a great city in which to be international.

Midday Express to Shinjuku, spot of shopping, then on to the Keio Line bound for Shimo-Takaido. Train pauses at Sasazuka-eki and, like a team of green-clad and bandanna’d foragers, there board the poster-men. Eight no less. They dismantle all hanging posters and clip on their successors (from huge mail-bags) at the speed of nano-robots. New posters flicked into straightness, lofted, fixed, and occasionally lightly slapped like new-born infants to test viability. Down carriage. Up carriage. Next carriage. The posters themselves bring into view new kanji, new images, new commercial eye-fluff. Kind of pre-industrial assembly line. Pure dispatch.