Kansai Morning Musings As switch tracks are thrown, the local train jolts into the station, allowing an express to roar through. The velvet bench seats are warm to the touch. My head brushes against advertisements for tours, musicals, adult magazines and the newest beverage. I space out to the klickety-klack of the electric railway. I hear the nervous rustlings of the sports page, behind which a company worker feasts upon his “me time,” on his way to the office. I hear nasal squeamishness of the conductor calling out scripted pleasantries. Everyone enjoys the excited yelps of elementary school kids playing tag, in amongst the patient sighs of seasoned office ladies and college girls applying an extra cake of foundation. I hear the soft slap of their patent leather penny loafers on the cement platform. Clubbers cackle about the previous night’s shenanigans, muttering about the day’s impending sleep and part-time work to be completed. White heat accosts your face as the rising sun’s light shines through the carriage’s many windows. Moments of gentle warm, mixed with a reassuring cool breeze, assurance enough that the summer heat is, for the moment, plotting elsewhere. Announcements leapfrog from the ailing PA system, reverberate off the underground labyrinth in some sort of tonal leapfrogging: “The express/sub-express/mildly local/departing on/arriving on track 1/3/5…is approaching…most honorable passengers collect your most treasured belongings…” Amongst the soul-suffocating din, a pigeon’s pursuit of a wayward cracker, crunched under a thousand Vibram soles, is rewarded with a happy cooing. Ravens ride the warm morning breeze, scanning for possible edibles hurriedly left behind by the busy citizenry on their way to work, school and points unknown. Train company jingles, reminiscent of 1980’s technology, compete for shattered attention spans: “I’ve been working on the railroad…Oh, give me a home…” And with a horrific metal on metal, teeth-gnashing scream, another train reaches its terminal, and another gaggle of Obasans queues, high-heels clicking on the stone floor; off to do another day’s business of the most undying importance. And at my destination I feel the passive-aggressive nip of another commuter’s heels as I trudge, apparently much too slowly for the public good, up the whirring escalator, which saves us all ten steps each morning. Like a biblical flood, we collectively whoosh out the gate, inserting passes and tickets while station managers observe the flow. Smokers hunch around ashtrays, enjoying Virginia’s finest. Luckily this all unfold before me, the sounds and odors of another place from which I didn’t originate. Another morning commute in Kobe, another glimpse into a morning in Japan.