On the train. It's the subway, midosuji, so long benches that face each other and the center of the car. A pair of strangers sitting next to each other, across from me. On the left middle aged, incredibly tall, doing the usual train-sleeping thing. On the right younger, perhaps a college student, engrossed in his manga. Everything as it should be except perhaps the man on the left. So incredibly tall that his long torso causes his head to loom so high above the young man on the right as to render it effectively invisible. For the manga- reader to actually glimpse his neighbor's face, he would have to put down the manga, lean far forward and rotate his head almost 180 degrees. Not a subtle gesture on the subway in Japan. Anyway, everything as it should be except also that the tall sleeping man has some sort of nasal issue which requires him to inhale sharply, rapidly, in multiple bursts, every 20 seconds or so. Sitting across from them I see the situation exactly as it is: a tall sleeping man, teetering sideways slowly with the motion of the train, like so many other subway sleepers catching himself at the last instant before toppling over. At that pivotal moment eyes popping open, realigning himself, falling back asleep. However in the present situation, the poor college student has no such objective point of view. What he senses is an enormous shadow, looming over him like a dark cloud. Perhaps his is something like the ominous feeling one gets standing under the empire state building on a windy day, and noticing in one's upper peripheral the clouds rushing by the chiaroscuro edge. A sickening sensation indeed. So anyway, the reader is visibly unnerved by the looming and possibly deranged giant, in part because there's no good way for him even to get a good look at the guy, without a lot of extremely immodest contorting. The nose thing also sounds a bit like a sharp laugh and might as well be, for anyone not lucky enough to be sitting across from them looking at a stony and clearly sleeping face. So it's all I can do to not laugh out loud myself, watching this young man do his best to read, to concentrate, to squirm millimeter by subtle millimeter away from his neighbor. The young man desperately trying to harness his nerves and quell his increasing alarm at what sounds for all the world like a maniacally snorting man who is tilting slowly over him, towards him, to crush him with his humor…