After this moving interlude, we decided to dive straight into the buzzing Shibuya district. Shibuya – everyone knows it, without knowing it. It’s that crazy intersection, with a tangle of pedestrian crossings and tall buildings covered in giant screens, screaming noise and lights. The Japanese Times Square. I’d read that this legendary crossing is the epitome of Japanese discipline: when the lights change to green for pedestrians, hundreds of people cross at the same time, carefully avoiding one another. ‘Imagine what chaos it would be if Parisians were thrown in there,’ Mum remarked with her usual tact. She couldn’t have spoken a truer word. I was a little afraid of what Louis had planned, but I had to follow everything to the letter. We had to follow everything to the letter.

We waited by one of the pedestrian crossings, surrounded by a hundred or so people. A hundred or so others stood facing us. Ignoring her protests, I attached Louis’s camera to my mother’s forehead with a ‘Take it or leave it’ that made her laugh and mutter that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and that I was well and truly my mother’s daughter. I switched on the camera and took her wrinkled palm in mine.

‘On the count of three, we close our eyes.’

‘You’re joking, I hope? Are you trying to kill me, or what?’

‘On the count of three, we close our eyes, Mum.’

‘Mary, mother of Jesus, what have I done for God to punish me like this—?’

‘Mum, you’ve never believed in God!’

‘Maybe that explains it.’

I laughed, and she laughed. I said, ‘One, two, three – close your eyes!’

The pedestrian light must have turned green, because we surged forward with the crowd, our eyes closed. My mother yelped in a panic each time someone brushed against her, and I laughed all the more. Then my foot hit what must have been a kerb, I stumbled and Mum steadied me. I regained my balance, and we opened our eyes again. We were on the other side. We’d just crossed the busiest intersection in the world with our eyes closed, and not been jostled once. These Japanese were disarmingly disciplined and well mannered. We looked at one another and burst out laughing. I think we felt alive.

We decided to take a well-earned break in a café overlooking the Shibuya Crossing, watching (and filming) the ballet of pedestrians for some time, with what we guessed were the latest Japanese hits playing in the background. Dusk was about to fall and we hadn’t noticed the time go by. It was already almost five and we still had a lot to do.