Tokyo is awash in cartoons.
Something about these childlike figures appeals deeply.
On every public surface, street sign and subway, they exhort, model, nudge, so sweetly, so gently.
You are seeing so many cartoon animals that you are starting to imagine them everywhere. The lead car of a shinkansen train, for example, looks less like a bullet, and more like the snout of a cartoon duck or crocodile.
As the suburbs of Tokyo slide by, it occurs to you that this is the fastest you have ever traveled in something touching the ground. Last night and this morning you spent on the phone with R, your talk made difficult and strange by the circumstance of talking across a fifteen-hour time difference. You are Saturday while she is Friday, and the two of you keep returning to a conversation that only one of you has had a chance to sleep on.
You’re only going to sit around and brood, she says. You’re in Japan, you should enjoy it, you should get out and have an adventure.
Outside the window Tokyo keeps going and going.