“What the hell is happening,” my mind reeled as the liquor from the night of drinking coursed through my veins causing my head to spin. In front of me a spiky haired beanpole tout wearing a cheap black suit sprinted and I was doing my best to catch him. My heart was pounding and my stomach churning but there was no way I was going to let the guy get away. To my left and across the street running parallel to us I saw my new friend, also in hot pursuit and looking just how I felt. It was 6am on Sunday morning and I was taking a break beside the Kamo River watching the sun rise before heading home from an all night welcome back party for a friend when this all began.
As my girl and I exited the bar and headed toward the train station located next to the Kamo river we noticed a friend that we had made earlier the previous day (Saturday) at the Manga Museum. He was leaning up against a stone bench gently snoozing the morning away. As the weather was nice and Japan relatively safe we thought nothing of it. Instead we took a seat a few benches up and began to talk while gazing at the rising sun.
Suddenly in mid-sentence my girlfriend exclaimed “Someone is stealing his wallet!” I turned around to see what she was pointing at and in the same movement rose to pursue without even consciously knowing what was going on. It was only after 50 meters or so that my mind caught up causing a rush of shock and indignation to flood my system. After another 50 meters something else caused even more shock and this time anger to electrify my nervous system.
In the blink of an eye the scraggily looking tout had turned around, placed the wallet on the ground, mumbled “I’m sorry” and continued to flee. As our objective had been so neatly placed in front of us my recently woken friend and I skidded to a stop. As much as I would have preferred to catch the thief it would have led to naught. The police would do nothing, dismissing it out of hand because it was two drunken foreigners accusing a low level yakuza tout and it would be more trouble then it was worth. If I beat the crap out of the thief, he would just have an excuse to sic the all too eager police on me. ‘No good deed goes unpunished’ as they say.
My friend and I both fought to catch our breath, still stunned at what had just happened. We were safe, the wallet was still full and it was shaping up to be beautiful day. I turned to him and said, “at least you’ll have a good story to tell when you get back.”
