Cruising along in the smoky cabin of the Shinkansen--train car number 3, non-reserved, from Osaka to Tokyo departing at 9:52 p.m. precisely--he lets his head droop down to his chest just as the speedometer passes 160 kilometers per hour, unlit cigarette still sagging from a small opening in his heavy, hardened face. His suit is a bit wrinkled and the stars outside shine bright, but not bright enough.

That Shinkansen cuts through the fucking darkness like a bullet cuts up flesh, I tell you. Loaded with people, motionless and snoring, it slices down the tracks at a ripping pace; shark-nosed, aerodynamic. But just erase it, for a moment--the train not the people--and look at them, just levitating barely above those rails the reach from sea to sea. Zoom, there they go, the flying people.

His cigarette finally drops, carrying a thread of saliva with it.

On his tie it will stay, until he wakes up in Tokyo; maybe at midnight. He'll light it, then.

Meanwhile, life in America-Mura is buzzing, well, as much as overpriced thrift stores and graffiti'd love hotels buzz on a Thursday night. (Which is actually a startlingly loud buzz. Think moth in the screen door or dragonfly with wing caught. ZZZzzz ZZZzzz Zzzzz.)

That little borough of Osaka, "Tokyo's Number 2 City" (according to Kyohei's broken English), is absolutely stuffed with kitschy clothing stores where the prices definitely don't match the second-hand feel the owners have worked so hard to perpetuate. $48 dollars for some torn up Levi's exhumed from their stinky, smelly, acid-washed early 90's coffin--for that kind of money you can get some great, authentic (and sexy!) school uniforms in Kabukicho.

Role playing anyone?

"Osaka has many sex shops," Kyohei writes in a text received while en-route.

I ponder it over some coffee.

The school uniform, that is, not the sex shops. I suppose I could find at least one of my friends who would enjoy wearing one of those around campus. College is still school, right? It's just that, well, uniforms aren't mandated. I guess.

Back on the street, my head starts to hurt. Osaka is just pissing neon darts down upon me, little lightning bolts of blue, green, red, pink, and urine yellow drop like colored doo-doo, enveloping the thousands below--including me. Their glow is unavoidable, and my face is lit like a jack-o-lantern.

The Shinkansen roars by, somewhere, scaring some unsuspecting soul standing on the platform--that is, of course, if you are still imagining the train minus it's shell. People only. That's pretty startling.

In Kyoto the temples sleep, quietly.

In Kyoto, I sleep.

Back in America-mura there is a female clothing store closing it's doors right about now, turning off all the lights inside and all the illuminated lingerie wearing mannequins outside, the ones that have been lit up all day, teasing Osaka's young women to come inside and buy, buy, buy.

It's strange, but when a mannequin is lit up from the inside like a candle, its bra, if white, disappears. If she's wearing a black undergarments, on the other hand, the contrast is well, just so stark that the bra and panties float in the air as if modeled by a ghost.

Spooky, indeed, but an effect no woman can achieve.

I propose we put an end to these type of mannequins.