First the reach into the handbag for a mirror. Time for make-up. Maquillage. Supreme young woman self-absorption. No matter that the rest of us are there. Or that some, as in my own case, are watching like parents at a school play, fashion critics at a catwalk. This is Odakyū-sen as powder-room, beauty salon.

It is the new face-to-be. The face as canvas. A quick tissue wipe. Then, from a galaxy of containers and tubes, the cleanser is called into action. A further and complete facial skin-wipe. After which it is the foundation cream. Rouge, lipstick (plus gloss), eye-liner and eye-shadow (applied with rounded devices that look like adapted spaghetti-pincers), serial dabs of powder. Everything done with the concentrated precision of a Dutch draftsman. A lot of finger smudging of this or that. Endless consultations of the mirror. On a late-night journey the woman in question actually pulled out a battery operated curling machine and got going with that, not something you see too often on a commuter train. Brush, comb and the occasional spatula as tools-in-trade get wielded, and re-wielded, with practised ease. A drop of eye-lotion or contact lens moistener. A squirt of hair spray.

On you watch, a front-row Odakyū spectator. On the part of the make-up maker-up all has to be accomplished with exquisite timing. After all she would not want to get to her station mideyeliner, kind of lop-side black eye to one side, un-lined eye to the other.

Finally this literal self-portrait gets the nod of approval. If there is time to spare there can also be nail-varnish and a touch of filing with just a further minute to get the make-up bottles and tool-kit repacked. And from the train, not infrequently at Shimo-Kitazawa as youth and boutique enclave, out from the train exits your Japanese Hepburn, your elegant railtrack Madonna. If Kafka had been a beautician he might have been proud – an infinite advance on the metamorphosis of your average household cockroach.

Screen-winning performance. Maquillage cinema.