ABUNAI DESU YO
In spite of logging onto LiveJournal practically daily and having plenty of time to waste on the internet, with each passing day I grow increasingly wary of actually updating this damn thing. Now that I'm finally sitting down to write something, however, my mind's drawing a complete blank. ()
Eh! I guess we'll pick off where I left off two entries ago, where the second point I mentioned I would bring up in the near future was my close encounter with the Japanese popos:
This may appear to be just a casual photo of me on my mama-chari (apparently short for Mama-Chariot, which refers to the bicycles here with the baskets attached at the front), happily gliding away, hair blowing back in the wind, not a care in the world. But, if you'll look closer, specifically in the area just over my right shoulder, you'll notice a certain vehicle that appears to be sporting a set of bright...red...sirens...?
...Soon after, we were blasted with a megaphone something to the extent of "Please pull over to the side of the road" in Japanese. Of course, we'd get pulled over; David was swerving halfway into the middle of the street as he haphazardly tried to take a photo of me, obviously not paying any attention to where he was riding his bike into. Rolls eyes!
But then Mr. Omawari got out of his car. And went straight to me. And then said something along the lines of "HAY YOU, YOU SHOULDN'T RIDE YOUR BIKE WITHOUT YOUR FEET ON THE PEDALS!! IT'S DANGEROUS DESU YO!!!"
...Well, sure enough, as you can see back in Exhibit A, I certainly didn't have my feet on my pedals. You know why?? Because we were going downhill. And you don't need to be pedalling when you're going downhill. Because if you tried to pedal while going downhill, you'll sooner get your face planted into the back of a truck. +_+
So, we had been warned previously that police here are notorious for pulling aside gaijin and asking to see if they've got their registration on them. But not even giving any mind to the very obviously not-Japanese David, who already had his Waseda ID card out to show the cop, he proceeded to drill me with questions about myself, my bike, my place of residence. Eventually he asked to see my registration card, which I don't think I had at the time so I showed him my passport instead.
It wasn't until after he scrutinized it for a few moments while asking me more irrelevant questions that I finally thought to show him my Waseda ID card as well. After which it seemed like a lightbulb clicked in his head, and he let us off.
::punches Tokyo in the face::
I realize that I wrote this as if I'm actually spiteful of the Japanese cops, but really, the same day I think I ended up running into, like, four more of them, and more than half of the time they were rather helpful; I had rode my bike to Waseda from by apartment near Ueno, which took three hours getting there because I kept getting lost, so on the way back I had to ask a cop at a kouban for directions; the trip back ended up taking only 50 minutes. Shrug! You win some, you lose some. ;o
