Riding the Yamanote Line through the heart of Tokyo, I am the Invisible Visible Man. It’s hard to ignore me for a number of reasons. First, I’m the only Caucasian. Second, I have a streaming, hacking cold.

I couldn’t be more obtrusive, yet no one looks at me. At least I can never catch them at it. Peripheral vision tells me that when I’m not looking, they are definitely sneaking a peek at Big Whitey. But when I turn their way, they’re suddenly transfixed by the video screen over the doors that features skiing ostriches advertising snow holidays in Hokkaido – or burying their heads in their books.

Like the woman hanging from the strap next to mine. She’s the very model of a stylish and sophisticated Tokyoite, from Ferragamo pumps to Fendi clutch purse, from cunning Alexander McQueen cloche hat to draped Vivienne Westwood jersey.

Oblivious to the cityscape flashing by, she’s engrossed in her book. Like a lot of commuters here, reading for her is both a public and a private act. She does it hemmed in by hordes of fellow passengers, but from behind a kind of screen. In a society determined to preserve the illusion of privacy any way it can – 35 million people call Greater Tokyo home, after all – she’s concealed the cover of her oversize paperback with a length of parchment printed with cherry blossoms.

Peering over her shoulder, I spy… not quite what I was expecting: boldly drawn comic book frames of a female superhero in bondage gear rampaging through a futuristic metropolis in pursuit of a male miscreant. When she finally catches him, she knocks him around some to show him who’s on top, then pierces one terror-stricken eye with a stiletto heel.

This turned-out Tokyo reader is devouring a manga, a Japanese picture novel that the mild term “comic book” doesn’t quite do justice to. Thick as a phone book, and graphic in every sense of the term, manga are the reading matter of choice for Tokyo commuters.

The city itself is manga- and anime-mad (anime is the Japanese term for animated film), plastered over with outlandishly drawn characters in hypersaturated colours. Button-nosed, saucer-eyed waifs hawk everything from octopus jerky to flavoured condoms. On a huge video screen suspended a dozen stories above Shibuya, Tokyo’s hectic youth entertainment district, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the cat and Tweety bird extol the virtues of a new condo project aimed at the moneyed young. Even when I bought my ticket from the machine for the Yamanote Line, an animated little girl bowed to me from the miniscreen once I’d dropped my 100-yen coins into the slot.