On the bullet train, I have been perusing the on-train shop brochure, which is a mental collection of Japanese inventions sufficient to make the average Innovations catalogue look like a collection of really useful items. Should the mood strike me at 200 miles an hour between Hachinohe and Sendai, I have the opportunity to ask one of the passing stewardesses to sell me a two-metre high bookcase. Or a dildo. I am quite boggled by the sort of things on sale, which seems to assume that all...