courage is the highest quality for a soldier, but technology is a fine substitute.

“Ueno Station,” Aoyama replays his grave spiel, “is an extraordinary machine. One of the finest-tuned timepieces in the land. In the world. And this fireproof, thiefproof office is one of the nerve centers. From this console I can access . . . nearly everything. Ueno Station is our lives, Miyake. You serve it, it serves you. It affords a timetabled

I think the most powerful poison is the malicious word. Its effects may last a lifetime and there is no serum. Forgiveness may soothe the inflammation later, sure, but there is no actual serum.

A mighty river of drones flows below the window—civil servants rushing to get to their desks before their section chief is at his. “Once upon a time,” says Ai, “people used to build Tokyo. But that changed somewhere down the line, and now Tokyo builds people.”

“Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still-are. You believe I am an old woman hoary with superstition, and possibly deranged to boot.” I could not have put it that well. “If I were not deranged, how else could I know w

Lao Tzu returns, posturing his behind. “Eat big, shit big, dream small.

Endings are simple, but every beginning is made by the beginning before. The one I shall choose is a night in the rainy season nine years ago.

An alcoholic, she says, is three things: a wounded person who desperately needs love and support; a person controlled by a parasite that lives in that person but is not that person; and a wounded person who will devour love and support until nobody and nothing remain.

During Anju’s and my dinosaur period, we found a theory claiming the great extinction occurred because the dinosaurs gagged to death on their own dung. We laughed for an hour, nonstop. Trying to get anywhere in Tokyo, the theory no longer seems so laughable. I feel I am gagging to death here. I hate its sidewalk-to-rooftop advertising, its capsules