9 a.m. train out of Mukōgaoka-yūen. Rush hour. Station personnel push various Japanese rumps into the carriage. Faces are pressed against the door windows. You are in the middle, unable to move. Hands up to a strap. Claustrophobia threatens. Then, damn it, the train stops between stations. Slight delay. Apologies over the intercom – please be patient. What, in growing Poe-like incarceration panic (‘The Premature Burial’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’), do you imagine would be the alternative? This is the Odakyū as body-prison, travel sentence. Touch, smell, arms, all other body parts too close to others. Not fun. But then, once the train makes it to Kyodo, to Shimo-Kitazawa, to Yoyogi-Uehara, to Shinjuku itself, out you pour like lemmings given new life. Reprieved prisoners. Train relief.

Monday or any other day, few things more convey Japanese etiquette in miniature than the bow one passenger makes to those either side of the seat he or she is about to take. It is ceremonialism with a twist – considerate, often accompanied by the excuse-me of sumimasen. And then, with care, the body gets lowered into the seat and all become good carriage order. If a newspaper is to be read out it comes only to be vertically folded in the interests of discrete spacemanagement, a small vignette of harmony.

Stunningly clear early afternoon. Keen chill but also sun. Waiting for the Local on Gotokuji Station it is possible to see Mount Fuji, Fuji-san, in all its snow-topped stateliness. If proof were needed of its iconic status, at once national and spiritual emblem, it lies in how fellow Odakyū passengers gaze lovingly upon its rising slopes even as the train slows into arrival. Stillness and motion. Zen and rail-track. Silence and brake-screech. It is a Japanese perfect configuration – sacramental mountain, skyline, train, travel. Platform contemplation.

Mukōgaoka-yūen rain-day. North Side entrance/exit (iriguchi/deguchi). One of the many etiquettes of the Odakyū-sen and other lines is the sight of a rack of free umbrellas (kasatate). They vary in quality and quantity – the cheapo see-though plastic kind and the better one-colour or ornamental kind.