Lately, I’ve begun to sense the steady, relentless, almost mechanical way that Tokyo moves. From the the platforms where trains arrive with the precision of a heartbeat, Tokyo moves on schedule. And within it, so do we.

I’ve started to notice the sleepwalkers. Men and women, faces unreadable, either a mask concealing, or eyes closed for sleep. From home to train. From train to work. From work to train. From train back home. Over and over, as if the day itself were just one long, looping dream.

And somewhere along the way, I’ve realized that in a month of being back here, I have become one of them. I shuffle with the morning crowd, step into the train with barely a thought, watch stations pass in a blur. Work comes and goes. Conversations feel muted, like voices breaking through a fog. Then back again: train, home, sleep, repeat.

It’s not despair exactly. It’s something softer, stranger—a drifting. A quiet surrender to the current of Tokyo life. I feel the weight of my own body moving, but sometimes it feels like I’m not even steering anymore. Just a passenger in the dream.

Maybe this is Tokyo’s secret: we’re all walking in our sleep, together. Moving as one, hypnotized by routine, yet still alive in it, still breathing, still searching for that moment—just one—that might jolt us awake. I want to snap out of it, but don’t know how.

Until then, I walk. I ride. I return. And I will do it all again tomorrow. Because I am a sleepwalker now, too.

October 2025