Japan - The day they almost arrested me in Tokyo

Tokyo, August 2009.

That year I planned to be right back in Japan for my summer break; I love this country and been there twice till then. I had two main targets for the trip:

• Reaching two friends of mine, already there on vacation as well, and enjoy some moments with them;
• Being alone, walking around, reflecting, and feeling that sense of safeness and calm of the safest place on earth, which they consider Japan to be; it was during one of these reflective walks that this curious episode happened.

I stayed in a mansion not far from the Ekoda Station (江古田駅), a place in the Nerima special ward (練馬区) in Tokyo, at about 30 minutes by metro from the famous Shinjuku (新宿), Shibuya (渋谷) and Ueno (上野), you might have had the chance to hear. Despite being not precisely in the city center, this zone is very populated, especially throughout the day, because of the nearby Musashi University Ekoda Campus (武蔵大学 江古田キャンパス) and the Nihon University College of Art (日本大学芸術学部).

August in Japan is way too humid and that day was so damn hot, I remember humidity in the air like if they cast soft water with a spray, and cicadas singing all around like happy to see me stuck in the sweltering conditions.

After a lunch of sushi in Ueno, I was coming back to the mansion for a nap (yeah sushi brings me drowsiness). After a few meters from the Ekoda Station, walking down what looked like one of the main streets in the neighborhood, named Senkawa Dori (千川通り), I accidentally knocked with my left hand on a parked car. The vehicle hosted a couple of person shapes, unclear due to the dark windows tint. I definitely can’t remember what car model it was, but I remember it was a sports car, one of those you drive almost sitting on the ground, probably a Nissan.

That was the moment when the worst hour spent in Tokyo was about to begin.

If you ask me: “Did you knock the car on purpose?” I can, of course, just confirm it was not intentional, I didn’t even pay any attention to that, and probably I would have lived without thinking about it if only a few moments, later on, I wouldn’t have been forced to recollect.

So, without caring too much, I just proceeded toward the mansion and moved away from the car by 40–50 meters, when I heard someone running behind me and shouting some weird Japanese words full of “Temae!” (手前!), which means “you!” but in a not so pleasant way) or “Yarou!” (野郎, something which could be associated with “son of a b#@?h!”); I was like “what the…”, but I was sure at 99% that those yellings were not for me, just until that “Temae!”/”Yarou!” compilation started to get stronger and right behind my ears.

I can’t remember precisely (this story dates back to about ten years ago), but this is more or less what I still have in my memory about him (Lego gently sponsored by my child’s collection):

Ok, he probably had his eyes in place and no baseball bat, but he was all in a black outfit, heavily bearded, with a gold chains on his neck and he was HUGE; you probably can’t imagine a huge Japanese man beyond sumo wrestlers, but this fellow was enormous.

So as soon as he reached me, he grabbed my arm, yelled at me out loud, and immediately called the police, quickly dialing on his phone. I was alone, and people around just kept doing what they were doing, completely ignoring what was happening. In the meantime, while he didn’t stop grabbing my arm and saying something unclear for my Japanese language level, his pregnant fiance slowly reached out to us in her long dress of striped clothes.

Quite soon, the police turned up. They were two scary…ok, let me tell the truth: I expected a patrol car to come, sirens wailing, guns drawn and stuff like that, but honestly, they were anything but scary…they were two old and skinny men in their fifty and they reached us by bicycles (two bicycles just as old as them).

I was puzzled by the entire situation, and anything was so weird that I was starting to figure me out in jail, far from my family in Italy, due to this crazy crime.

They asked me too many questions: about me, about Italy, on where my accommodation was, on “do you know this guy who is squeezing your arm?” and finally on “Why, why did you do this detestable and unorthodox act?”. I started to get mad, and the officer made my blood boil, so that upset I asked in English what the problem was and what this crazy story was all about.

“This woman is pregnant, and with such a savage and sudden move, you could have hurt her.”

Yes, I couldn’t believe it, but that was the answer.

Probably not fully back to myself yet, I gently asked for excuses to the fiance, who was not concerned at all of what has happened and probably just came up to get his man back.

The police officer, finally, just wrote something about me on a notebook, looked my face and my ID picture, just to double-check I effectively were not a criminal, and concluded this infinite and awkward interlude, saying:

“For this time, I’ll just report you and let you go, but never do it again, ok? At the airport, during security-check, they might ask you some questions about this episode.”

Rome, April 2020.

That was my last chance to go to Japan for several reasons.

Nevertheless, I didn’t lose interest in Japan, its language, and its culture, and I’m always studying, researching, and reading books about it.

I was reading this exciting book by Will Ferguson: Hitching Rides with Buddha, where the author tells his long trip hitching throughout Japan, from south to north, following the cherry blossom front. During his travel, he often gets into trouble, and, without doing many spoilers, in one episode, he has to deal with the police for trivial reasons.

Once he gets out of trouble, the police officer says (taken from the Italian translation and loosely re-translated in English by me):

“D’accordo” disse. “Per stavolta le… facciamo solo una segnalazione, ma non faccia mai più una cosa del genere, capito? Mai più.” (“Ok then” he said. “This time we just gonna report you, but never do such a bad thing again, understood? Never.”).

Sound familiar, right? This short passage refreshed my memory and brought me back to 2009, so I decided to write down and share my crazy but still fun story with you.

Lesson Learned

Japanese people have a different culture, hard to comprehend for a Western European man. This guy’s reaction to my undetectable knock might probably seem to overreact, and I was shocked indeed. But when I think again about it, I see myself as an intruder, as someone who altered the state of calm, balance, and peace of other people.

People around me were not ignoring me; they were just trying not to disturb other people’s peace as I did.

When you go abroad, please respect the others and adapt yourself to the country rules and ways of living, don’t break through the barriers, just watch behind them.