Classic local-station arena. First the station itself. Commuters. Odakyū ticket machines (jidō kenbaiki). Pop-in/pop-out ticket gates (jidō kaisatsu). Neat dark-uniformed office and platform personnel (eki kakariin). And always passenger movement, passenger footsteps. Station dynamics.

Out front you have the taxi-ranks to the left (2010 minimum fare ¥710), a whole bus-complex to the right (stops, a depot, turnarounds). Take a bus ride and you have two voices coming your way: a recording giving you the name of each stop and details of local stores or attractions and, alongside, the driver-conductor himself through his dashboard or head microphone. Is this a simply journeyman ride or local guided tour? On the west side (turn left) are the squares of bike-parking, meticulously geometric, and presided over by a team of older bike-guardians.

The inventory continues. A lottery kiosk plus music. An Odakyū-OX shop (newspapers, drinks, snacks). The ubiquitous and easy-touse green phone to be found in or near all Odakyū stations (Shinjuku, Yoyogi-Uehara and Machida have batteries of four). ¥10 to get connected. A pitchfork of streets with small stores, eateries, banks, photography drop-off places, a pachinko parlour, a Mama-san bar. A Faculty bus-service for Meiji and Senshu universities atop the nearby hill though not available to students presumably on grounds of youth leg-power. The panorama could not be more familiar, ordinary, yet always with its own twist or play of angle.

HOUSING

Step out from the station itself and two architectures hit you smack in the iris. To the right you have a newly built 23-storey high-rise. No sooner built than occupied, laundry on the balcony, apartment lights at night. For sure a capital city has to house its people and where better than near a station, a Line, heading directly into Shinjuku? But this is also the vertical box par excellence, a built-environment at vertiginous and concrete right-angle to the Odakyū track.