I came to Tokyo for the first time in the spring of 2006. My girlfriend Sara had got a job there, and so I decided to move with her to explore the city in which she had grow up. It was a society I had never experienced before, one of which I had little knowledge and to which I had no real sense of relationship.
Initially I felt invisible. Each day I would walk the streets without anyone making eye-contact with me. Everyone seemed to be heading somewhere – it was as they had no need of communication. Most mornings I would take the Chuo-line from Nakano to Shinjuko, and even though the train would...