This place seems silent. Quiet. Calm. An air of mystery, some fushigi sense permeates the atmosphere, the land, the people… but it is latent. Waiting. Sleeping.

The train carves sections from the countryside, the cities. Like a vein, it carries life to the cities, spreads the vitality of those metropolises to the extremities of inaka, bringing workers to the farms and logging camps. Worn out, spent, the trains return them to the heart of the city or the bosom of the countryside to be revitalized, reoxygenated, to do it again the next morning.

Like organs, the cities pulse and filter, process and store, digest and exhale the steady flow of people. New York may never sleep, but this is Japan. Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto, Fukuoka—they merely slow—they are not asleep. The only thing asleep is the countryside, and that fushigi thing waiting behind the mountain mist, latent.