I sometimes thought she was an assassin. Other times, I thought she was living a mundane office worker life revolting by always wearing black. I thought other stuff too. I usually didn’t seriously think she was actually an assassin.

I didn’t have much to go by. I got on the Sobu at Chiba, she got on the Sobu at Makuhari. We both got off the Sobu at Shinjuku.

There sometimes seems to be this very fine line to me between someone looking like a model out of a magazine, and someone being considered incredibly unattractive. I think it must be connected with how people can think ugly ducklings can turn into beautiful swans. It’s not like their entire features change, but something very subtle changes, and what was once irregular in a way that society sadly deems unattractive suddenly becomes and exotic or elegant beauty.

When I say she was near this boundary, I in no way am putting a personal opinion in whether she was beautiful or not. I found her neither. However, I thought that in the collective consciousness of us all, her mystique hovered around that line. Some people would most definitely find her incredibly attractive. Other people would most definitely find her to be a woman always frowning and turn their nose as to how she was always wearing only black.

She was slender, but that doesn’t really say much. Her black clothes were always a bit loose, so there was no way of knowing if it was because she was keeping in shape, was naturally skinny, or unhealthily slim.

Like all of us, she had her routine for this hour of her day. I first noticed how entrenched her routine was when she broke it ever so slightly with a book.

Before I noticed her black clothes, before I noticed her dangerously dancing between beauty and whatever else, I noticed something that was much more important: she always had a 3DS with her. A 3DS is the current Nintendo handheld device needed to play Nintendo handheld games. The 3DS didn’t do as good as its predecessor, the DS, and many games that were supposed to help it mimic the sales of its predecessor did not do so. One game in Japan was what can be considered a huge bloody hit, and that game was Animal Crossing. This is the game that this woman was playing nearly every day I saw her on the train with her 3DS for almost 2 years.

I have never played Animal Crossing for the 3DS, but I played it for the Nintendo Gamecube, which was a console to play video games on television sets. The Gamecube had its heyday perhaps between 2001 and 2006. There was also an Animal Crossing for the previous Nintendo device to play video games on television sets (the Nintendo 64), but that only came out in Japan, and during this time I was a resident of Canada.

Anyways, I am mentioning this so it is aware that my bias for the woman playing Animal Crossing on her 3DS is through glasses that are tinted with only the experience of playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Gamecube. I was taught in high school that identifying bias is important.

Animal Crossing games are the types of games that non-gaming journalists are ordered to cover due to their influence in the larger world. Journalists then create narratives, do some “investigative reporting” (play the game) and churn out an article about how Nintendo is quirky and a toy maker who “gets” things (or conversely does not if sales were less than expected).

It’s not the point A to point B kind of game that used to be big.

In Animal Crossing, you have a house in a village, and you can decorate it with furniture. There’s various ways to get this furniture. You can also get different types of clothing. A big part of the game is doing favors for your neighbors. Sometimes they want a beetle, or to have a letter delivered to their next-door neighbor. I forget what happens if you do these favors, but I think it would help you get furniture and clothes to make your house and person look more nice. I feel nicer and more nicer are distinct here.

So the woman in black always played Animal Crossing. If you don’t play it everyday, there are negative consequences in the world. Imagine if you just ignored your neighbors for weeks? Would they like that? No, and neither would your Animal Crossing neighbors. (Perhaps Time Magazine compared it to Tamagotchi here?) Weeds would also grow in your yard. I think an angry mole also appeared and got angry.

She would get on the train at Makuhari. She wouldn’t wait to sit down. She would stand in front of a person, and she would take out her 3DS. Her 3DS was in a gothic-style case. It wasn’t the type of overpriced case a dorky foreigner would buy, but one of those cheap cases that anyone could find in a Yodobashi Camera that happened to have had a goth design on it. She would unzip the case, put the case back in her purse, open her crimson red original 3DS (there are many types of 3DSes, but it’s not really too too important).

She definitely knew where to stand. She was doing her commute long enough to have a reasonable idea as to where was the perfect spot. She knew about the slightly overweight, kind of weird guy in those big framed glasses (that look like they were big in the 70s everywhere, and still big with Japanese politicians here) would get off at the next stop, Makuhari Hongo, and therefore she would stand in front of him if he was available to stand in front of. If he was not, there were Plan Bs, Plan Cs and so on. Sometimes she would have to stand all the way past Suidobashi. During these times I would look at her face to try and catch any hint of frustration or fatigue. I never saw either once. I wouldn’t say Animal Crossing entranced her either.

She was usually able to sit down, because she was usually able to stand in front of the guy in those glasses that got off the train at Makuhari Hongo (you have to wonder about a person that gets off at Makuhari Hongo). Whether she was standing up or sitting down, she was playing Animal Crossing on her crimson red original 3DS.

I never really “got” Animal Crossing (me and that Time Magazine journalist) and I never really cared to look and see how she was doing in it. She also very rarely was sitting beside me. That was always okay by me because at this time I was playing lots of 3DS myself, and I always thought it would kind of stick out to sit beside someone else playing 3DS, and I didn’t want to stick out (a dumb wish for a white guy in Japan perhaps). I was never playing Animal Crossing though. During this time, I was probably playing Dragon Quest VII. I did my best not to look at her screen after confirming that it was in fact Animal Crossing that she was playing.

I usually didn’t need to look at her screen to confirm that she was playing Animal Crossing though. The 3DS has a feature “Street Pass” where an avatar (a “Mii”) you create gets wirelessly and automatically transmitted to 3DSes around yours. Your Mii, with cartoony facial features that can resemble your own face if you like, walked into their 3DS, and was able to say a few words. It also told you what game that person was playing at that time.

So our Miis would say hi to each other, exchange greetings, and let us know what each other was playing at the moment. During this time when Animal Crossing was quite a hit, one could Street Pass about 30-40 people a day in Tokyo. I’m sure it’s very different now. When you met a person multiple times on Street Pass, you were able to send them a personalized greeting, and let them know if you think they are “great” or not.

It was common courtesy to let everyone know that they were great, and it was quite rare to give people personalized greetings. I sometimes got them, but it was usually a pain for me to try and reply in what seemed like fluent Japanese. At this time in my life, I still wanted people to think I had perfect Japanese despite not having perfect Japanese then (well, or now).

I said she was great. She said I was great. She played Animal Crossing. I played Dragon Quest VII. I was going to a job at a company that didn’t pay overtime, and had a boss who would call people into his office just to yell at them for a few hours, she was a mystery wearing all black, going to kill people, or sell clothes, or manage an engineering firm. Something. It was impossible to read her.

On some Fridays, she wouldn’t only have her usual purse which had the gothic case that housed her crimson red original 3DS. She would also have a small suitcase. Seeing the suitcase always made me smile because I assumed that she was planning a trip for the weekend. She lived in Makuhari, and worked in Shinjuku. It is much easier to get on a bus or train from Shinjuku than it is from Makuhari. Shinjuku was a sort of bus hub, and it was good for trains as well to various locations.

I imagined that she was going to Karuizawa in the summer to escape the heat. It was hard for me to think if she was going alone, or if she was going with a lover or a friend. Well, I always imagined that she was going alone. I imagined that she probably would’ve liked that better.

Whenever I imagined she was an assassin (the stupid thought came into my head more often when I saw her suitcase for her supposed trips), I always imagined that character from Murakami’s 1Q84. The character was an assassin, and liked to have sex with married balding middle-aged men. I doubt the woman in black liked to do the latter. I bet she couldn’t be bothered and preferred to play Animal Crossing. Despite not being a fan, I did kind of respect that rejection and total acceptance for what her village demanded. Maybe it was meditative?

Some days when she came on the train she didn’t pull out that gothic 3DS case. Perhaps she didn’t even bring her 3DS on these days? Instead she had a book with her. I think this happened twice for about two weeks each time. I guess that’s how long it takes to read a new book. Regardless of her profession, I imagined that these books would be the latest by Natsuo Kirino. I was happy and sad when I saw her with a book. She wasn’t playing a video game on a dedicated video game console anymore, but she was branching out and doing other things. Good for her! Her face wore the same expression with the book as it did with the video games, and that being expressionless.

On a day that wasn’t in one of her book periods, nor on a Friday where she had her luggage full of clothes for Karuizawa or weapons for killing, I did something that was quite out of character for myself. I sent her a personalized message via my 3DS to her 3DS. I forget what I said, but it was something inane. “The train’s late again!” or “Isn’t it hot?” or something. No, that wasn’t it. It was a rare time where we caught the same train home from Shinjuku, or at least we Street Passed each other on the way home as well. I think my comment was something like “wow, [we Streetpassed] twice in a day!” or something. She replied to my personal message (you have the ability to ignore them as well) with something like “we did, didn’t we?” I’m assuming (I don’t remember). I sent her another message, and she didn’t reply to that one.

I think I had thought what I had said was “too much”. It was probably something like “works a pain, isn’t it?” which may not sound like too much, but it was too much to me because it is going into what could turn into a personal conversation. I hadn’t really any interest in doing that, but I was intrigued to communicate with this person, and therefore I guess got carried away to being invasive with a “works a pain, isn’t it?”

Nothing changed. There’s no real end of beginning, except for the when I started that job in Shinjuku, and when I quit it. She never changed. She played her 3DS. On the rare Friday she had her suitcase. If she was really into a book, she would read a book for a few weeks. Then she would go on to wherever she went, to do whatever she did, wearing loose black clothing, having a frown, and seeming somehow (somehow?) very content and happy.