I had a first kiss in the middle of a subway station once. One of the biggest in all of Tokyo and subsequently one of the most famous.
There's no underground subway metro quite like the Tokyo underground subway metro.
You are but a drop of water in an ocean once you've descended the steps.
The roar of the trains rushing across the tracks sound like the crashing of waves upon the rocks.
Ticket machines chirp, beep, click.
Muscle doesn't float so you must let yourself be carried along by the surge of the tide of commuters. Don't fight the flow.


Before the kiss, I avoided the subway. I held my breath whenever the train tracks dipped into a tunnel and we were bathed in darkness. Only during those brief moments I would catch glimpses of my reflection in the window.
I saw a young, terrified girl.
Three years later, I still see the same young, terrified girl.

The kiss took place in front of the ticket machines. Next to a pillar with station names plastered down its side. It was near midnight but still the trains roared and the waves crashed.
I finally understood the pull of claustrophobia.
The deliciousness of vertigo. When up becomes down and down becomes up. A world existed beneath the world above.

He is no longer here, in my life, or in that station. But once in a while, to indulge myself, I would take the train to the subway station where we first kissed. I would walk to the same spot where we once existed together in a common time and space and stand there awhile.

I had a first kiss in the middle of a subway station once. One of the biggest in all of Tokyo and subsequently one of the most famous. What they don't tell you, is that it is also one of the most beautiful.