LOCK, SHOCK AND 2-WHEELED BANDITS
One, two, buckle my shoe
Three, four, break the door.
Okay, it's supposed to be knock, but I prefer break. Lock would be even better, but in doing so tonight I broke the door. Yes, roughly a year after my first Japanese late-night locksmith call-out, I thought it was about time to do it all again. Woohoo. Well, there were some differences...
a) This time, it was the door at work.
b) This time it wasn't strictly my fault.
c) This time it was only one locksmith, not three (thankfully)
d) This time I got into my apartment by 2am, not 3am.
To expand on these points:
a) A new lock was recently installed on the building's front door. I didn't know that it has an auto locking function.
b) As per usual, I tried locking the door after exiting. The auto function seemed to be acting in reverse, and automatically unlocked the door after I locked it. I tried again and left the key in a bit longer. The auto thing went off and the key jammed in the door. Oh great! I panicked, called my friend Takako, took my phone to the convenience store, walked up to the guy at the counter and sheepishly handed him my phone motioning for him to speak to the person on the other end. He was cool about it and helped us look up a locksmith.
c) A really nice guy turned up much quicker than I'd been warned. He was really cool despite having a Daniel Powter ringtone on his mobile. Although I was having a "Bad Day". He got the door open pretty quickly and then fixed the lock so that it works properly. 13,650 yen later... ittai! (ouch)
d) I got away by 1:30! My last train had already gone so I braced myself for the walk home. It's not really that far, just boringly familiar... well, so I thought. Not this time!
I took about a dozen steps before I was confronted with an exciting little episode. I had been hearing a "car" driving around beeping frantically for a while. It sounded like a car horn, but I discovered it was a scooter. It had settled into the bus bay and was just doing laps honking constantly. Remember, this is at 1:30 in the morning. There were 2 people on the scooter.
I thought, wow, what brain surgeons do we have here? Waking everyone up just for the heck of it is a pretty neat trick. I soon realised that that's not the point. They were drawing out someone to play with...
A standard Echo policecar pulled up in front of me and then waited. Then a Zero Crown appeared a little way off - a luxury patrol car! Then they pounced - the Crown racing into one entrance and the Echo to the outside of the other, to try and head the scooter off. Needless to say, the scooter simply opted for the footpath and cut right across in front of me, a few metres away. They had bandanas over their faces! haha. Japan's a pretty safe place to play the tough guy. Anyway, I assume they got away. As I walked home the police were scouring the streets, sometimes chasing with sirens wailing in the distance most of the way home. Some guys were watching the whole thing in their pimped-out VIP car (a style of car where you basically get a luxury car and put big rims on it and body kits. The extreme examples have amazingly wide home-made wheel arches to cover your fully sick deep-dish wheels!) I couldn't tell if they were friends of the scooterists or just spectators. As the chase went on I heard a throaty car get in on the action, so maybe they joined in too. I think that's pretty risky, but what chance do the police have of catching a scooter? So... do I live in the country or what! Not a lot for bored kids to do.
Well, it's really late, but I wanted to redeem something from my crappy night and tell a bit of a yarn. Yarn was the aim, maybe yawn is the product! Is for me, anyway. Night...
One, two, buckle my shoe
Three, four, break the door.
Okay, it's supposed to be knock, but I prefer break. Lock would be even better, but in doing so tonight I broke the door. Yes, roughly a year after my first Japanese late-night locksmith call-out, I thought it was about time to do it all again. Woohoo. Well, there were some differences...
a) This time, it was the door at work.
b) This time it wasn't strictly my fault.
c) This time it was only one locksmith, not three (thankfully)
d) This time I got into my apartment by 2am, not 3am.
To expand on these points:
a) A new lock was recently installed on the building's front door. I didn't know that it has an auto locking function.
b) As per usual, I tried locking the door after exiting. The auto function seemed to be acting in reverse, and automatically unlocked the door after I locked it. I tried again and left the key in a bit longer. The auto thing went off and the key jammed in the door. Oh great! I panicked, called my friend Takako, took my phone to the convenience store, walked up to the guy at the counter and sheepishly handed him my phone motioning for him to speak to the person on the other end. He was cool about it and helped us look up a locksmith.
c) A really nice guy turned up much quicker than I'd been warned. He was really cool despite having a Daniel Powter ringtone on his mobile. Although I was having a "Bad Day". He got the door open pretty quickly and then fixed the lock so that it works properly. 13,650 yen later... ittai! (ouch)
d) I got away by 1:30! My last train had already gone so I braced myself for the walk home. It's not really that far, just boringly familiar... well, so I thought. Not this time!
I took about a dozen steps before I was confronted with an exciting little episode. I had been hearing a "car" driving around beeping frantically for a while. It sounded like a car horn, but I discovered it was a scooter. It had settled into the bus bay and was just doing laps honking constantly. Remember, this is at 1:30 in the morning. There were 2 people on the scooter.
I thought, wow, what brain surgeons do we have here? Waking everyone up just for the heck of it is a pretty neat trick. I soon realised that that's not the point. They were drawing out someone to play with...
A standard Echo policecar pulled up in front of me and then waited. Then a Zero Crown appeared a little way off - a luxury patrol car! Then they pounced - the Crown racing into one entrance and the Echo to the outside of the other, to try and head the scooter off. Needless to say, the scooter simply opted for the footpath and cut right across in front of me, a few metres away. They had bandanas over their faces! haha. Japan's a pretty safe place to play the tough guy. Anyway, I assume they got away. As I walked home the police were scouring the streets, sometimes chasing with sirens wailing in the distance most of the way home. Some guys were watching the whole thing in their pimped-out VIP car (a style of car where you basically get a luxury car and put big rims on it and body kits. The extreme examples have amazingly wide home-made wheel arches to cover your fully sick deep-dish wheels!) I couldn't tell if they were friends of the scooterists or just spectators. As the chase went on I heard a throaty car get in on the action, so maybe they joined in too. I think that's pretty risky, but what chance do the police have of catching a scooter? So... do I live in the country or what! Not a lot for bored kids to do.
Well, it's really late, but I wanted to redeem something from my crappy night and tell a bit of a yarn. Yarn was the aim, maybe yawn is the product! Is for me, anyway. Night...
posted by Ian at 2:15 AM
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