Police Station Adventures
So I finish a nice workout, shower, and head off to tutor a student. Before I board the train I drop off my workout bags at my scooter, which is neatly parked in front of the station. In my scooter there is a storage compartment under my seat, that has very little room. So I decide to put my toiletries under the seat with one shoe. Locked. Safe. I decide to put the other shoe and my dirty gym clothes in the front basket. Not locked, but stinky. So, essentially I think its safe. Who would really want to steal a stinky gym shoe and dirty gym clothes to match? Well, somebody in Nishinomiya would.
I get back to my scooter after my tutoring lesson and realize that my shoe is still in the basket but my workout clothes are gone. The people watching me scope the area must have thought I looked like a total ding dong. I looked under my tire at least 10 times. Shall I remind you that a scooter tire is about the size of a small pizza... So yeah, not much chance that my stuff would be "hiding" under there. Well, I scoot home in denial. Maybe my gym clothes will have magically appeared at my apartment. The denial changes to mourning... thinking about how much I'm going to miss my favorite sports bra and tank top. The mourning soon changes to exasperation. If I can't find a decent fitting swimsuit in Japan, how am I going to find a new favorite sports bra? Exasperation becomes seething anger. This person is never even gonna even use my sports bra. What a waste! I think about how the thief that opened the bag, searching for goodies, found a bunch of sweaty clothes. My anger had turned into satisfaction.
So, a couple nights later, I had a genius idea of asking the train station guard if he had seen my bag. He sent me to the nearby police station. Before I begin, let me just say that I could have saved about 2 hours of my time had I learned the word "lost and found" in Japanese. Unfortunately, they were interested in filing a police report on my sweaty gym clothes. And it took about 20 police officers to accomplish this.
First, they wanted me to describe the contents. "Well, officer, there was a pair of workout pants, and two tank tops." Then he asked, "model?". At first I was flattered. I thought, hmmm, I'm not really that tall or leggy, and I have these elf ears that kinda stick out, but you know... I'm not so bad looking. He interupted my vision of my first Paris runway show, when he said, "what is the make and model of your clothes?" Oh, right. Make and model? Well, this is no time for an English lesson. So, I said, "there were grey capri pants, one small blue tank top, and a longer grey tank top." Then they brought out a map that was the size of Texas and asked me to point to where my scooter was parked. Ok, this is pretty easy in English, but a map in Japanese characters?... look out. So, I asked the man where KFC by the train station is located (KFC and the train station are literally a half a block away from this police station). But, I threw the guy for a loop. I thought, you want ME to be able to point to where my bike was parked, but you can't point to a place that's close enough to spit on? We finally found the place.
Last but not least they wanted me to give the estimated value of my belongings. Grey capri pants. $10. Grey tank top. $10. Smelly socks. $1. A perfect fitting sports bra... priceless. I couldn't bring myself to say $100, but that's what its worth to me. So, I said $10. Then, he asked, "what kind of bag was it in?" "It was a simple, nylon, drawstring bag that I got from the 100yen ($1)store in Japan. It was my favorite bag." So he said, "Let's say 50". I thought, what a nice guy... he's gonna bump my $32 loss up to $50. He can feel my pain. Excitedly I asked, "$50 dollars?". He responded, "Uhhh no. 50 cents... for the bag." No way, man! I was vulnerable at this point. I had compromised enough. And, I think he was beginning to feel that. So, he said, "How about 80 cents?" We both started laughing. So, $31.80 it is. Nearly sold my soul.
After all this, the rookie officer was handed a pen and paper and proceeded to compose a 10,000 word essay about my gym clothes. It took forever. I thought this was the land of the Haiku?... what ever happened to those tiny yet profound poems of 7 words. A simple, "green bag lost... sweaty gym clothes... stolen" would have worked. I think.
After about 45 minutes of watching this young man sweat over this report, I decided to walk around the police station and strike up some conversations with the officers. The first guy was a little rusty. I asked him, "How are you?". Instead of, "I'm fine, thank you." He said, "I'm thank you." Well howdy, Officer Thank You. The other officers were all cracking up at his minor mistake. I continued to move through the crowd until I was summoned to come back and sign the paperwork. They told me they would call me if anything turned up... or if my clothes decided to walk away on their own and turn themselves in. Either way, they'd call.
As I left, I had 20 officers and one lady officer wish me farewell. I told them that they are much nicer than American officers, and they all laughed. I mean, these guys are the definition of Officer Friendly. They don't even carry guns. They could probably Karate chop the heck out of you though. Anyways, it was 11:30pm, I was tired, the rookie officer had a massive hand cramp, and it was time to go.
To end this story on a beautiful note... a day later the police station called and told me that they had my clothes. They were in the lost and found office that closes at 6:00pm. I went to the police station to pick them up and the clothes had been washed... probably by the nice lady officer. She gave me her phone number and invited me to dinner at her home with her family. Now, THAT is service with a smile!
I get back to my scooter after my tutoring lesson and realize that my shoe is still in the basket but my workout clothes are gone. The people watching me scope the area must have thought I looked like a total ding dong. I looked under my tire at least 10 times. Shall I remind you that a scooter tire is about the size of a small pizza... So yeah, not much chance that my stuff would be "hiding" under there. Well, I scoot home in denial. Maybe my gym clothes will have magically appeared at my apartment. The denial changes to mourning... thinking about how much I'm going to miss my favorite sports bra and tank top. The mourning soon changes to exasperation. If I can't find a decent fitting swimsuit in Japan, how am I going to find a new favorite sports bra? Exasperation becomes seething anger. This person is never even gonna even use my sports bra. What a waste! I think about how the thief that opened the bag, searching for goodies, found a bunch of sweaty clothes. My anger had turned into satisfaction.
So, a couple nights later, I had a genius idea of asking the train station guard if he had seen my bag. He sent me to the nearby police station. Before I begin, let me just say that I could have saved about 2 hours of my time had I learned the word "lost and found" in Japanese. Unfortunately, they were interested in filing a police report on my sweaty gym clothes. And it took about 20 police officers to accomplish this.
First, they wanted me to describe the contents. "Well, officer, there was a pair of workout pants, and two tank tops." Then he asked, "model?". At first I was flattered. I thought, hmmm, I'm not really that tall or leggy, and I have these elf ears that kinda stick out, but you know... I'm not so bad looking. He interupted my vision of my first Paris runway show, when he said, "what is the make and model of your clothes?" Oh, right. Make and model? Well, this is no time for an English lesson. So, I said, "there were grey capri pants, one small blue tank top, and a longer grey tank top." Then they brought out a map that was the size of Texas and asked me to point to where my scooter was parked. Ok, this is pretty easy in English, but a map in Japanese characters?... look out. So, I asked the man where KFC by the train station is located (KFC and the train station are literally a half a block away from this police station). But, I threw the guy for a loop. I thought, you want ME to be able to point to where my bike was parked, but you can't point to a place that's close enough to spit on? We finally found the place.
Last but not least they wanted me to give the estimated value of my belongings. Grey capri pants. $10. Grey tank top. $10. Smelly socks. $1. A perfect fitting sports bra... priceless. I couldn't bring myself to say $100, but that's what its worth to me. So, I said $10. Then, he asked, "what kind of bag was it in?" "It was a simple, nylon, drawstring bag that I got from the 100yen ($1)store in Japan. It was my favorite bag." So he said, "Let's say 50". I thought, what a nice guy... he's gonna bump my $32 loss up to $50. He can feel my pain. Excitedly I asked, "$50 dollars?". He responded, "Uhhh no. 50 cents... for the bag." No way, man! I was vulnerable at this point. I had compromised enough. And, I think he was beginning to feel that. So, he said, "How about 80 cents?" We both started laughing. So, $31.80 it is. Nearly sold my soul.
After all this, the rookie officer was handed a pen and paper and proceeded to compose a 10,000 word essay about my gym clothes. It took forever. I thought this was the land of the Haiku?... what ever happened to those tiny yet profound poems of 7 words. A simple, "green bag lost... sweaty gym clothes... stolen" would have worked. I think.
After about 45 minutes of watching this young man sweat over this report, I decided to walk around the police station and strike up some conversations with the officers. The first guy was a little rusty. I asked him, "How are you?". Instead of, "I'm fine, thank you." He said, "I'm thank you." Well howdy, Officer Thank You. The other officers were all cracking up at his minor mistake. I continued to move through the crowd until I was summoned to come back and sign the paperwork. They told me they would call me if anything turned up... or if my clothes decided to walk away on their own and turn themselves in. Either way, they'd call.
As I left, I had 20 officers and one lady officer wish me farewell. I told them that they are much nicer than American officers, and they all laughed. I mean, these guys are the definition of Officer Friendly. They don't even carry guns. They could probably Karate chop the heck out of you though. Anyways, it was 11:30pm, I was tired, the rookie officer had a massive hand cramp, and it was time to go.
To end this story on a beautiful note... a day later the police station called and told me that they had my clothes. They were in the lost and found office that closes at 6:00pm. I went to the police station to pick them up and the clothes had been washed... probably by the nice lady officer. She gave me her phone number and invited me to dinner at her home with her family. Now, THAT is service with a smile!
posted by niki at 7:44 AM
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