There is nothing if not a language-poetry to the Odakyū stationsigns, especially at larger stops like Yoyogi-Uehara, Noborito and Machida. The names themselves exude a winning phonetics, a syllabic bonne bouche. Yoyogi-Uehara does perfect duty with two signs, one for the Odakyū Line, the other for the Chiyoda Line. The former is oblong, white in background, and with an Odakyū blue line running through it. The name is given in Japanese (kanji and kana), in English (or more accurately romaji) AND in Korean. It tells you that one station back is Higashi-Kitazawa, and the station ahead Yoyogi-Hachiman. Its Chiyoda-Line cousin, alongside and in parallel, has the Chiyoda green line running through it, its own three-language name, and Higashi-Kitazawa and Yoyogi-kōen given as respectively previous and next stations. Train semantics in small. Design in multiples. Place-names in best clarity and colour. The perfect rebuke to an outsider who thinks Tokyo, Japan, ‘impenetrable’.

Today's Express trip has me sitting next to a salaryman who, reaching into his plastic bag, brings out a dozen or so CDs, each in its see-through plastic case. He then produces a handkerchief and, like some demented night-cleaner, starts polishing the cases. Furiously. Non-stop between Seijo and Shinjuku. You reach for a touch of Freud or thoughts of the anal-compulsive. But it does not really hit the mark. There he is, almost an Odakyū diamond-polisher, the Odakyū guardsman-marine-commuter doing his parade boots. Each CD and case he holds to the light for artisan inspection. Then, all goes back into the plastic bag and off he marches. The man with the cleanest CD collection in Tokyo.

Education Odakyū . Amid the profusion of posters for electronics, clothes, trips, this or that deal (with plenty of swimsuit shots and proffered limbs and cleavages in view), there are panels advertising High Schools and universities (some with relevant Odakyū station indicated). The universities, mainly private, come over as Pick Your Own academic fruit-and-vegetables – Seijo, Meiji, Senshu, Obirin, Tama, Nihon, Kanagawa, Tokai. Each has its picture of a beckoning Gate or Building.