The Odakyū Line, my stretch of it at least, for most of the year has been widening itself. Adding extra track, and with it extra platforms and (over the Tamagawa) a new bridge. Massive, intricate engineering. A near-miracle to watch. City-loads of concrete. Whole snakes of insulated tubing. Earth-movers, fork-lifts, cranes, a cornucopia of vehicles and machinery. Concrete and wooden sleepers. Gravel and pylons. Ready to lay down new rail-tracks. There has been local resident-complaint as old streets get co-opted and demands for underground as against above-ground development, especially near Shimo-Kitazawa. But one feature of the whole operation abides. If you are on an early-morning train, 7.30 a.m. or so, you get a sight of well-ordered files of hard-hat workmen doing… group-stretching. Kind of railway Tai-chi. Or Pilates. Or old-fashioned Calisthenics. Another kind of track (track-suit?) work.

Toire. Toilets. Is there a more luminous name in this realm than TOTO – WC and Urinal? The Odakyū has its full share, station for station. A recent glance at the Toto catalogue brings word and sight of no less than forty-one domestic styles with control-panels worthy of a NASA space shuttle. Heated seats make for the least of it. Super-duper flush valves. High-chrome levers. Skirted bowls. Colours of ‘Colonial White’ and ‘Sedona Beige’. On the Odakyū Line we are talking about urinals which set the logo TOTO either at eye-level or as you look down to roughly crotch-level, together with one traditional ‘squat’ toilet (washiki) alongside the Western variety. Spousal report confirms that in the Ladies toilets also there are rarely paper towels or hot air blowers for after-duty hand-washing as is required form. But then passengers carry small cloth towels or handkerchiefs all the time, for brow-mopping in the summer humidity, for precisely toilet-washroom drying hands duty. Either way TOTO prevails. Odakyū station convenience to meet Nature's call.

Vignette. In the course of four Odakyū (and other Line) trips, a small sartorial gallery. First, a 12 or 13 year-old boy with a baseball cap saying FUNK YOU (did his parents know?).