On our way to a much nicer type of Japanese tradition, we ran into some local uyoku demo.

I know I should be a little more annoyed at the continuing existence of these subhuman leeches, but I nearly felt bad for them:

A few dozens sexually-frustrated ojisans (plus one very angry lady on the microphone), matched at least 3 to 1 by a cordon of (very nervous) police officers and easily outshined by the crowd of energetic counter-protesters in the public… Most of whom were young-enough to still be in university in a few years, when the Dai-nippon grandpas finally get sent to retirement homes (presumably staffed mainly by immigrant Asian workers. Oh, sweet, delicious, irony).

These days, our household entertainment program has added the TV dorama version of Great Teacher Onizuka to the rotation. This 2012 remake of a much older series, itself adapted from a popular manga/anime running in the late 90s, follows the adventure of a barely-reformed yanki/bosozoku type (the titular Onizuka) who, through great feats of suspension of disbelief, gets hired by a private high-school principal to teach a particularly difficult class. Difficult, in that the usual troubled, broken home, violent kids are the good ones: the bad ones are an assortment of sociopath damien-like monsters constantly plotting to get rid of the teaching staff through increasingly deadly means.

Like most Japanese TV fare, this one offers a mildly entertaining serialised story with mediocre acting, pathetically cheap production values and implausible plot reveals that would shame a Mexican telenovela. The point being: it is fairly simple Japanese and good language training when you are too tired to exercise the rest of your brain.

Of course, this would not be a Japanese drama, without its share of gratuitous sexual innuendoes, heavy on female objectification and wildly inappropriate¹from a tame Western standpoint behaviours by male characters. With the latter presented as light comic relief and therefore never worthy of onscreen reprimand, unlike whatever other amoral behaviours (stealing, loitering, failing to properly sort their rubbish…) the bad guys engage in. Lack of (Western) political correctness on Japanese TV is par for the course and somewhat refreshing (if you don’t think too much about what it says of Japanese society).

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Yesterday, a necessary bike ride from the confines of Odaiba back to our neighbourhood (10km as the crow flies, 20km in practice, thanks to the freaking Rainbow Bridge being closed to bikes) yielded my first police bike check of the year. To be fair, they stopped me because of the headphones (with a very unconvinced “危ないよ”), but hey, why miss an occasion to check on the vehicle’s papers.

As always in my interactions with the Japanese police, this one was extremely courteous and friendly. In fact, it took a slightly unusual turn when the conversation went from the perfunctory “Where are you from/How long have you been in Japan/日本語はうまいですね” to the slightly more personal “やっぱりヨロッパ、ヨロッパ人はかっこういいですね”…

And then it got weird.

The one young cop not busy checking my bike’s registration number inquired if I was riding back from the local gym. I told him that not, and that the lycra tank top I was rocking was merely in some vain hope of not entirely melting during the one-hour bike ride in the Tokyo Summer. “But you do work out, right? Yea, I could totally tell”…

A new string of gushing (and comically undeserved) comments on my cool European demeanour and style were interrupted by the other cop confirming that everything was in order and I was free to go.

Beside both policemen being roughly my height and weight (and just as unlikely to ever succeed as male strippers), the only thing missing to the softcore gay porn scenario was the boom-tchiki-boom music.

Club Metro, Thursday, 1am

_ “Hallo! How aru you?”
…
_ “Whichu country… Whichu country aru you from?”
…
_ “Ahh… なるほど… すごいですね…”
…
_ “Your nose… Your nose: it is berry strong. はなは… つよい！I like very much!”

Don’t change a thing, Japan.