So what is Japan? An empire of signs, dreams, senses? Land of the chrysanthemum or rising sun? A wonderland or a tragically broken fantasy? Have globalisation and recklessness overwritten the delicate sketches of a local culture with heavy brushstrokes? What is Japan? My head is so full of half-ideas I feel urged to write things down, if only to fix a point in my evolving thoughts. In the shinkansen I practice phrases and sentences to myself as I stare blankly at the land rushing past the window. Getting nowhere I wander up to the cafeteria car and order something to drink and eat. A gaijin girl who comes up behind me asks for help with making her order. She is English, chatty and big-breasted. We talk for a while then I gesture with my hands, full of my dinner, inviting her to come and eat with me at my seat. She humps a ridiculously large and grimy backpack onto her shoulder and follows me.

Her name is Isla. Inevitably we discuss Japan. Isla has studied the Japanese language for years, she says, but now she is here she cannot work up the courage to use it. Rashly I mention my desire to write down my thoughts and impressions, even talking about perhaps attempting a book. This unleashes a kind of tirade from Isla. She starts by deriding the very idea, listing the standard clichés: the doll-like woman, the star-crossed love affair, charmingly simple at first, hopelessly complicated at the end, clichés about the electric toilets, the public baths, the tea ceremony, the sashimi, jokes involving swapped r and l sounds, the concept of face. Next she warns me not to use the words ‘inscrutable’ or ‘exquisite’ and not to include a character called Boon. She asks me if I’ve read Bicycle days by John Burnham Schwartz, or The art of being Japanese by Robert Dunham. She talks about writers who say all things about Japan are different, but imply that all things about Japan are inferior. I suggest we had to wait for Alan Booth before we had an author who was capable of being funny about Japan without demeaning either himself or his subject. Maybe, she says, and continues…

Eventually, bored with her own talk, she dozes. I steal hungry sideways glances at her breasts, swelling high, and imagine what I might do if we were alone on the train together. When she wakes I ask her if she would like to stay in my room tonight, but she declines.

We say goodbye at Tokyo station and in the concourse I walk past a train loony wearing huge headphones, flicking a torch on and off, grinning widely, cackling, shaking his hands in excitement, finger-posing and making shapes, constantly checking for the headphones even when they are not on his head, a pair of binoculars tucked under one arm. I am strangely annoyed at him. Frustrated at being turned down by Isla I feel like chasing after her and explaining that she has just made a big mistake, that she doesn’t know what she is missing, etc.

I check into my hotel and fall asleep with the television on. In my half-dream I try to make sense of the discussion on the screen, which has been recreated for me in a dream room. I am sitting at a table with several other people, but they never let me get a word in. As soon as one pauses, another starts. I have interesting points to make, but no-one seems to know I am there, and the thoughts keep swimming away from me. Noises from the corridor, where two hotel guests are talking loudly in English, gate-crash the dream and bring me back to my senses in a state of mild alarm. I can’t sleep now, so I run a bath.