Teenage Kaito lives with his mother on Amami Oshima, an island in the Amami archipelago located in Kagoshima Prefecture, Southwest Japan, known for its clear waters and offshore reefs. A series of events coinciding with Kaito's adolescent development has led him to Tokyo to visit his father, Atsushi, who works as an assistant at a tattoo parlour in the city and from whom his mother is separated.

Eating together at an izakaya, Kaito asks why his parents split up. A restrained yet tender father-son bonding session unfolds, and the pair stroll home along a narrow yokochō alleyway lined with the kanban signs of snack bars, the chōchin lanterns of small restaurants, and the twinkling of fairy lights. Atsushi opens up to his son, revealing that what he wants in life is to pursue his passion for painting. Kaito, wishing his father lived closer, responds that you don't need to be in Tokyo to do that. Atsushi then launches into his feelings about the metropolis:

There's energy here in Tokyo that you can't find elsewhere, a warmth only Tokyo has. I haven't travelled the world, but I feel an abundance in Tokyo, and not in the material sense. It's busy and tiring, and time passes quickly, but it is also a city that amplifies my desire to express myself.

Cinematic scenes of city life unfold to a quietly emotive backing track of strings and piano as Atsushi gives his account of the city's inspirational power. Father and son emerge from the backstreets and retire to a local sentō bathhouse. This sequence is from Kawase Naomi's 2014 Cannes-nominated Futatsume no Mado (Second Window), released outside Japan under the English title Still the Water. It's a slow-burning, soul-searching film. Atsushi's quote touches on Tokyo's ephemeral qualities, which cannot be easily explained by analysing the material aspects of the city.

Time passes quickly for Atsushi and tires him out, a sentiment felt at some point by inhabitants of all big cities. We might nod along with aphorisms like "time flies" and "time is money." You'd need to have deftly evaded contemporary discourse over the past decade not to have been informed that we live in an "increasingly fast-paced world." 

For a period, I commuted daily along the length of the Keio Line from my home in the Greater Tokyo city of Hachioji to Shinjuku, where I'd transfer to continue the journey east toward my workplace. It is no understatement to describe an interchange at Shinjuku station during rush hour as "hectic"—a veritable case of big city "hustle and bustle." This often-referenced example of Tokyo's scale is the setting for many a meme of lost foreigners.

Seasoned commuters, however, know which door of which carriage to wait by to gain a few footsteps on the crowd when their train pulls in. They know the best shortcuts through the labyrinthine station to reduce their transfer time. They walk briskly, according to an internal timer developed over years of making the same journey daily. All this happens with innumerable calculations in the subconscious related to possible obstacles like not fitting on the first available train, the current weather conditions, and the day of the week. It is not a smooth flow with river-like qualities; it's a sea of activity where human bodies crisscross in all directions, and the act of cutting across another's path is an art that requires timing, patience, and a polite yet confident execution.

Partaking in a 1.5-hour commute each way to fulfil the nine-hour workday—eight legal hours of work plus one for lunch—leaves you with a palpable sense of scarcity about the time in your life. To wrestle a more plentiful feeling of time back from the system, I would wake up as early as possible, 5 AM, and shift the start of my workday to 8 AM. I'd slot personal tasks between my morning routine and the long commute to free up hours in the evening. This desperate orchestration of daily activities is the essence of the adage "time flies."