I spend the morning catching up on the sleep I missed last night. In the late afternoon I go to meet Satomi at Shinjuku, where I find her waiting in the same black pants and a tight breast-flattening shirt. I am momentarily very conscious of her body, but she is business-like and purposeful. She has appointed herself guide today, and I have expressed an interest in seeing Odaiba, an enormous new development across Tokyo Harbour. We make our way through Tokyo by train and catch the monorail over the Rainbow Bridge to the reclaimed land that is Odaiba. From the bridge we catch glimpses through the buildings of the pale lavender outline of Mount Fuji.

Beside the monorail station at Odaiba stands a huge metal box – purple, windowless, and several storeys high. Against the darkening sky it looks black and oppressive. Its name is Venusfort, and it is a shopping centre with romance.

Along with several young couples, with linked arms and awed expressions, we walk through the entrance and step into the dream. The interior is an idealised recreation of something Italianate, perhaps a version of old Florence. A synthetic blond masonry clads all the shops; unloaded stone pillars, unnecessary arches, and unseeing windows. The floor is a nameless compromise between authentic medieval cobbles and practical non-slip tiling. The ceiling bears faint impressions of clouds, and is now darkening in harmony with its counterpart outside. The gentle bubbling of Rococo fountains can be heard above serene synthesiser music floating overhead, and the effect is one of complete security in a foreign place, something I think the Japanese people yearn for.

We move around the streets in communal flow. I try to unravel the nested set of fantasies collected here. Japan is a dreamy place to start with, and Tokyo is as unreal as any place on earth can be. Odaiba is artificial in many ways. Everything about Odaiba is new, even the earth beneath it. Odaiba has been designed with a purpose, to attract people. So, whatever they want, Odaiba will become. Venusfort lifts itself above these three layers of hypnosis to create yet another state of unreality. And, as if that were not enough, there are even special ‘Venusfort fantasy evenings’, which add a further, fifth, level of artificial abstraction.

Detractors may say the effect is one of ersatz stylisation and superficial consumerism. Of course it is, but how irrelevant! The point is that very few people think of Venusfort that way. I am told, by unmarried Japanese women in their mid-twenties (just to get the demographics right), that Venusfort is a romantic place and good for couples. The name combines concepts of love and security, which themselves are highly compatible, but it combines them in an incongruous way. Love and war. Love and siege. Satomi tells me that the concept (I’m surprised at her use of the word) of Venusfort is aimed at women, but I feel that all shopping centres are aimed at women anyway.

We look around for a suitable place to eat. Having eaten pizza nearly everywhere else recently, I perversely choose French fried potatoes here. I ask the waitress for shio, salt. Satomi tells me I ought to say ‘o-shio’, honourable salt, when I am talking about someone else’s salt. Sitting across the small table from her, our knees touching, I start to feel a physical desire again. I ask her if we will return to her place tonight, but she explains that both her boyfriends like sex and tonight she has promised to look after the other one. She finishes the explanation with a level look, curious about how I will take the news that she will have slept with three men in twenty-four hours. I simply respond that I still want to sleep with her. It is not possible, she says, with a convincingly regretful smile. There appears to be nothing more to say on the matter. No love, no siege.

After the meal we walk out of Venusfort into the brilliance of Odaiba’s night-time lighting. Next door in the Toyota showrooms we are again surrounded by young couples – most of whom appear intent on leaving hundreds of incriminating fingerprints all over the cars. Satomi and I strain our ties with reality still further by driving the car simulator. This is a massive white tablet-shaped capsule suspended on six hydraulic legs that pulse and thrust in response to how the driver inside handles the controls. From the outside it resembles a monstrous bloated insect posturing for a fight, on the inside it is a mixture of perfect physical verity and disturbing spatial effects.

The controls all appear to be the real thing – a car. The two of us sit inside, legally seat-belted. I put my hand on Satomi’s leg, she knocks it off again. Through the windows we watch a wrap-around projection of space. The otherwise perfect effect has two weaknesses. The resolution of the images is a little coarse, so they are difficult to interpret at times, but more off-putting, the relationships between my movement of the controls, their mechanical feedback, the motion, and changes in the scenery are dissonant. The disparities between apparent visual movement and actual physical movement have an unsettling effect on my stomach, and I am glad to get out. I crash the car four times. They are all serious incidents involving no damage. Satomi jokes that I need to take driving lessons again, the attendant hands me a slip of paper showing that I scored 30,000 points, where the best drivers have scored about 90,000. I am too queasy to care.