As Notes From the Smoke afternoons go, the one I spent in Monzennaka-cho got off to an unpromising start.
The area around exit three of the station was dominated by a spiteful wind and a towering, mucus-colored amusement arcade that could have stored oil tankers.
A teenager emerged from the latter wearing a mauve shell-suit; for one terrible moment I thought I had wandered into an episode of Brookside.