1996/3/4 COCO Trip on a Nice Day
(dream) 1996.3.4 I am walking in Ginza. Some kind of work has come up and I rush down the street to get home. I suppose the going would be easier if I used an underground passage, and enter a basement bookshop-like store. As I walk down the stairs, the stairway progressively narrows. Bundles of documents, paper and unopened books lie on the stairs making it hard to walk. The store clerk stares fascinated at the paper bundles not giving heed to my existence. I force my way down the stairs, ankle-deep in paper bundles, to a bookshop exclusively of difficult Western-language books with several white-collar customers. It is quite disorderly, nonetheless, and somewhat like an office. I wanted to look at Western-language books, but go over to the regular book corner on the opposite side. It is somehow like a department store bookshop. I go up an escalator and am on the ground floor of a regular department store.
I exit the department store and am again walking on Ginza Avenue. I decide to go to Shimbashi or Yurakucho and head north. (It should really be West.) Though I was walking in Ginza, I am suddenly lost somewhere resembling an old, downtown residential district of Tokyo. I must have come a bit too far? I've completely lost my sense of direction, and follow an old woman walking in the area.
In doing so I come to a small station of a private railway. It is the Keisei line and connects to the Keihin Kyuko line. At first I think that if I walk along the tracks I'll get to Shinagawa, so I walk the platform from one end to the other. I soon abandon that idea, however, and think that even if it costs a bit, I'll take the train. It was only three stations. There are many people on the platform, and I feel as if they are all staring at unfamiliar me. The platform traffic goes down onto the tracks.
(feels like the Enoshima Line Hase station) The railroad crossing at the station is down. The tracks are at eye level. I gaze vacantly at a train go by, while at the platform a one-car train pulls up. It glides in and stops shy of a line drawn on the tracks. I look to the conductor's seat, (a skilled conductor would have stopped exactly on the line,) where an apprentice is being instructed by an old hand. If this was his only fault, I'd say he did a good job of stopping. The apprentice was a middle school-aged young boy. Upon second look it was a face I had seen on TV, somewhat like Tatsumi Takuro.
He was playing the role of a conductor for a day for TV or an ad campaign for the railroad. I thought he was quite good having learned only today. Mr. Tatsumi was saying something about the brakes and clutch to the man playing instructor. It does not seem all that different from driving a car.
I notice that there are no train cars, the conductor and Mr. Tatsumi are squatting on the tracks talking. I think this cannot be and cross the tracks to buy a boarding ticket. I walk right in front of the crouching conductor and Mr. Tatsumi and apologize for my impoliteness.
On the other sides of the tracks is an old route map painted on wood like they were in the 60's. It too is positioned to be seen from a squatting position. I stare at the map not knowing for what amount and to where to buy a ticket, when a local elementary school boy approaches and tells me he will show me how to go. I say that I want to change to the Keihin Kyuko line. He says there are many stations I can do that at. However the map shows only stations like Nohi, which are quite far away. The young boy says, "I don't really know, why don't you ask him?" A young station worker is opposite me smiling, so I ask, and he says that if I take the next train I'll be OK. "That train only stops on this side of that bulletin board, so please board that one," he informs me. (The end.)
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