Postby Brody » December 2nd, 2006 2:47 am
Heh, let's just call this story "What we got here is a problem of miscommunication."
The new James Bond movie opened in Japan last night (Friday), and let's just say, I was a little excited to go. I'm your average young male: I enjoy explosions, gun fights, hard-ass-etry, and cleavage, so starting last Sunday, when I saw the first sign promoting the movie here, I've been practicing my spy techniques. In high school, I actually set my career goal as: spy, and now that I've grown older and wiser, I know that is a dim possibility, but hey, I don't choose my dreams. Anyway, I've been sneaking up on friends, sending them coded text messages, taking the elevator to the fifth floor and then walking down the stairs to the third floor where my class is, naturally to thrown off any tails. I pretend to tie my shoes in crowds so I can look back and see who's following me. During class I hum the James Bond theme and Thursday night I actually had trouble sleeping with anticipation. You don't know how much it has helped my Japanese abilites talking about the new movie in Japanese.
So, Friday night rolls around and it's finally time to leave the dorm for the theater. I try taking a nap before, so I'll be wide awake during the movie (like that will be a problem), can't sleep, so instead I run down the halls, knocking on doors, yelling, "James Bond! James Bond!" The time comes and we set off on the bikes. I roar down the roads, leaving all the others behind, no longer able to wait. Once I have my ticket in hand, I'm fine, and we spend an hour or two before the movie at an arcade.
The movie was great. It was funny when we would laugh at jokes and the Japanese around us wouldn't. All of the jokes were word plays that didn't translate well, so we had to explain. After the movie, I had my James Bond fill, so I was back to normal. As we were leisurely riding back at midnight, some police were standing in the middle of an intersection, which we were riding down the middle of. I was at the front of the pack and one of the police men stepped forward and with a friendly smile held his hand out to the side and said something to me. I couldn't here what he said, but assumed the road up ahead was bad (why else would they be standing, blocking it) and he wanted me to use the side street. I said thank you, smiled, and turned.
Well I was wrong. He chased after me and yanked me to a stop, grabbing the back of my bike. He started speaking rapid Japanese, but I guess when he was my shocked face, he realized I merely had not understood. He made me get off my bike and go off a ways with him, then he checked out my gaijin card and asked me who I was, where I lived, etc. Right now I was freaked out: it was my first attempted escape from police, albeit unknowingly. Luckily it was the dead of night, so he couldn't see how read my face was. My Japanese wouldn't work for the life of me, but I got across the message that I was an exchange student, where I lived, that the bike was mine, and that we were going home. He was really nice though and the two policemen wished us well on our ways.
Afterwards, my friends gave me a hard time and told everyone I tried to run from the cops. They were sure he had said something to the effect of "Please stop" and told me I was an idiot for not getting it, but to my credit, I couldn't hear what he said and he was holding his hand at an angle, which looked to me as if he were indicating the side street, not the action of stopping. My friends and I had a long debate about hand signals and I adamantly hold out that, had his been held properly upright, it would have communicated the idea of stop, rather than the miscommunication of "go to the right" which is hand angled to the right suggested. My friends felt they then had their proof that I was an idiot.
So thus, I can now add to my long list of accomplishments that I have attempted escape from police in a foreign country.
AKA パンク野郎
And other types of pictures too. 
