The narrator is in a small town in northern Italy, and he hears a freight train coming through the town at night. He's excited to think that the train is coming from Japan, but he can't figure out where it's coming from. He wonders if the train might be passing through the night, and imagines what the passengers would think. The narrator has a one-day ticket for a tram, but the tram doesn't have a station, so he's bummed out that he couldn't get on the train.