Taking the train into the city, from the airport. The train that starts from the airport is a subdued affair. On crowded commuter trains people are busy texting, others napping, and there is usually a man hunched over, scanning a racing form. On long distance trains people eat elaborate box lunches, and older men drink beer or something stronger. The train trip is part of a happy or anticipated event. But the airport train has only people who have just come from other countries and are waiting to reenter their lives. They are temporarily without tension or purpose. The scenes out the train window mean little to them. Two train conductors stand in the middle of an expanse of tracks, apparently waiting to start a shift. There is a rectangular, aging building in which the Fuji Taxi Corporation has its headquarters, with its fleet of cars outside. A man in an undershirt stands looking out an upper window. A dispatcher on a break? a driver waking up after a night shift? Fuji Taxi also has a sign facing the train track advertising for drivers. It looks as though they are perpetually short. On the taller building across the taxi yard is an advertisement for a mutual aid shareholding company. Those who pay in monthly will have their expenses covered, in the case of an unexpected wedding or sudden funeral. Under the sodden sky of this late Friday morning in mid-March, people are going about their lives,somewhere else. The parked cars and buildings stand about, quietly.

The Fuji taxi corporation (below), looking for drivers

As a sign that the train is about to enter the city proper, a place that can distinguish itself by putting up a spire of symbolic intensity which will draw a crowd of spectators, from the train window there are glimpses of the Tokyo Skytree.