Each platform a longitudinal island with tracks either side. If you’re using the steps it's up to the overpass and then down. (Each step with parallel stripe in black, yellow, red and black – presumably to make sure the feet know just where they are even if you have a grip on either the metal handrail or the wall.) Plunge-prevention if you are going down, trip-prevention if you are heading upward. Four strips in all. The steps themselves are assiduously cleaned by greenoveralled station employees. No danger of errant wrappers, a pile-up of dust or bird droppings. You can also go slow-motion and take the lift, or elevator (whose movement is akin to silent-running).

Yellow blind-strips throughout. Plus the usual arrow-indications of train.

Once on either platform you have the electronic train-timetable, a meticulously uniformed station man in white gloves wielding a mike-intercom, and a whole inventory of platform utensils. Fire extinguisher. Water fountain. The Lifts or Elevators. A mirror for make-up adjustment. Plus those marked train positions for waiting – white triangle for Local, yellow triangle Express (you can also get one of the Romance Cars). Several wooden seats in park bench style. No-smoking signs. Station cameras at the platform ends looking like diagonally angled TV sets.

On both platforms, there is the Waiting Room, softly air-conditioned in the summer, softly heated in the winter. Eighteen fixed seats, nine to a side. Blue cushions. Slide doors. Top half all in glass. Operating-theatre effect. Just the place to get a quick glance at the newspaper. Time was when the south platform had a tiny four–five person soba counter under the stairs. Since it is traditional Japanese eating practice to slurp soba, it was a place to see, or equally hear, noodle-pleasure with accompanying ingurgitation acoustics.

A key centre of platform activities as you await your train is the Kiosk, or at least since there is only the one, that on the North Side.

The kiosk faces you like a grocery-cum-newsagent wall. OX SHOP (in blue) overhead. Pinafored lady assistant in charge. Layers or shelves of small-purchase items. Atop is a row of plastic-bag items: pens, lighters, mints, lip balm, cellophane wrapped tights, thin tubes of glue, tissue handkerchiefs and ever eye-catching portable ashtrays.