TOKYO  I was on a Japanese treadmill gazing at the usual numbers, speed and calorie count and so on, when I started to get mesmerized by the little images of food and drink on the screen.

At 35 calories, there was a frothy cappuccino, and then at 75 two pieces of tuna sushi, to be followed at 126 by an ice cream cone, at 150 by a beer and at 204 by an elegant glass decanter of sake. The 300-calorie mark ushered in chocolate cake, which segued at 325 to cheesecake. At 450 calories I caught a sweat-drenched glimpse of an egg-topped sandwich suggestive of a Croque Madame. Whatever followed was lost in translation.

I’d never seen anything like this in any gym and found myself lost in an obsessive, screen-gazing state. Were these images, I wondered, warnings about dishes and drinks to be avoided, or were they invitations to enjoy them later, the visual projection of a no-pain-no-gain philosophy? Or were they simply calorie-count notices of the kind now found in New York restaurants?

I still don’t know. But my sense is that the state I found myself in, of playful fixation on a screen, imagining the bite of the ice-cold beer and the unctuousness of the sushi, contained something peculiarly Japanese. This is not to say of course that kids the world over are not mesmerized by screens of various forms often showing Japanese-made video games. But I’m not aware of any other nation where fantasy, escapism and the cyber world have fused with such intensity.