Yōkoso! Welcome. Before you are the selective train timetables and chronicles of the good Line Odakyū, Tokyo, Japan. Odakyū-sen. OER, or in full, the Odakyū Electric Railway Corporation. Or rather one's own bit of the Odakyū Line and a whole circuit of thoughts and meditations that have gone with it. Journeys and journey metaphors. The Odakyū Line leaves Shinjuku Station, Shinjuku-eki, Central Tokyo, and heads southwest some 82.5 kms to end-of-the-line terminals in Hakone-Yumoto, Odawara, Enoshima and Karakida. An estimated 500,000-plus passengers board and deboard every day. The train appearances become quickly familiar: cream and blue carriages, newer grey-metallic carriages.

Plus the half-dozen Romance Cars, the sleek ‘limited express’ limousines of the line that ply at greater speed between Shinjuku and Hakone.

Twenty or so stops west along the Line is Mukōgaoka-yūen (to be precise nineteen by Local train, five by Express). My own station. If Shinjuku Station can be said to signify the metropolis, Tokyo as major city hub, then Mukōgaoka-yūen does duty as the home station. Mine, but I hope by implication, yours. Or so runs the assumption in play. Wondrously ordinary at first sight but, as always, surfaces deceive.

Now an octogenarian, built in 1927, the Odakyū Line is currently being updated – new tracks and bridges and underground additions – between Yoyogi-Uehara, four stops out from Shinjuku, and Mukōgaoka-yūen. To any number of commuters at large, salaryman and increasingly salarywoman, schoolboy and schoolgirl, shopper and shopworker, and especially those travelling the morning and evening rush-hours, the Odakyu has acquired its own monicker. Affectionately, and unaffectionately, its travellers reach for a not unfamiliar train image.

THE SARDINE CAN

Or in a local image

(Squashed Sushi)

The text's narrative has been written by yet another irritating Englishman Abroad, an igirisu-jin. Resident in Tokyo these past fourteen years. Teaching literature moreover. And at Japan's largest university. The Odakyū, then. Tokyo, then. Japan, then. And written through a current English-language lens. The line-illustrations are by Yuriko Yamamoto, Japanese by birth, a seasoned designer trained at Tama Art College, Kawasaki-shi, and working in the city.