As part of my research in both terrorism issues and Japanese social attitudes, I’m reading “Underground” by Haruki Murakami. He’s a well-regarded Japanese novelist. Underground isn’t a novel, it’s a piece of “witness literature” – edited accounts of the attack from survivors. I’m about a quarter of the way through and it’s getting quite chilling. The account I just read talks about Ochanomizu and Yotsuya stations. When I travel to the Kanda campus of Meiji University I get the Odakyu line to Shinjuku then take the Chuo (Rapid) line past Yotsuya station and get off at Ochanomizu. I’m no more worried by this than the fact that I travel through some of the 7/7 bomb sites when I visit London, but it does make the accounts more immediate for me.