Shin-Okubo is the residential setting from which Sanada Chiaki sets out for a client appointment and where she and Kawashima Masayuki later arrive at an apartment complex. The neighborhood’s position between shopping and residential districts places the story’s private encounter within an ordinary urban environment, while the building’s enclosed garden, glass elevator, and dim corridor give their approach a progressively secluded character.

Setting and Route

At twenty to six, Sanada Chiaki takes a taxi from in front of her building in Shin-Okubo, leaving enough time to reach the Keio Plaza Hotel five minutes before her appointment. She is dressed carefully for the meeting, and the journey links her residential surroundings to the large hotel in West Shinjuku. The account establishes Shin-Okubo through this practical point of departure rather than through a broad description of the neighborhood.

The Apartment Complex

Later, a taxi drops Sanada Chiaki and Kawashima Masayuki at a small, new apartment complex described as midway between Shin-Okubo’s shopping and residential districts. The building has no lobby security guard. Its U-shaped structure encloses a cramped garden planted with potted plants and marked by an angel statue; the elevator’s glass walls make the statue appear to fall away as the occupants rise. These details turn an otherwise ordinary residential building into a sequence of visible thresholds between the street and the apartment.

Approach and Interior

On the sixth floor, the pair pass an elderly man walking a puppy in a fairly dim corridor lit indirectly. Sanada Chiaki says nothing to him, and he scarcely seems to register their presence. After she opens the apartment with an electronic key card, its spacious single room contrasts with the subdued approach: thick carpeting covers most of the floor, a climate-control system emits a low hum, and a sliding glass door opens onto a veranda with deckchairs. West Shinjuku’s skyscrapers remain visible in the distance, linking the enclosed apartment back to the urban setting. Shin-Okubo thus anchors both Sanada Chiaki’s departure and the more private space reached later, where the city remains in view even as the encounter withdraws from public notice.