Today I was going to write to you about something strange that happened to me yesterday. Before I got started writing today I had yet another weird experience. Ok, I’ll begin with what happened this morning:

After having thought overnight about witnessing a hustler pulling a classic con job on an old man yesterday I decided to write about it. First I got to have some coffee. I found that I was out if it and went to the store. Got there a few minutes before it opened and did what everyone else was doing, got in line. Waiting. When the doors opened I casually strolled in and went for the coffee counter where I usually get my dark roast whole bean. Looking forward to the jawa and thinking about the blog post I was about to write I first didn’t notice.

When a store opens in Japan all the workers line up to great the customers. All bowing and “irrashaimasse”. Seen that before, but by now it was something else. All the customers was running like crazy. All over the place. Ok, so they have a sale today, I thought, people want to come first to the good stuff. Still, seemed like there was no sale after all. Ok, maybe they just want to come first to get the really fresh sashimi or something. But that was wrong too. People were running like crazy all around the store. I went around to have a look and saw people shop like it was the last day on earth. Or last day before rationing cards would be introduced. Or first day after a war. Men and women were pushing carts and swinging baskets like athletes. Throwing in bread, milk, sausages and everything else. Like wolves or wild birds people were grabbing everything in their way.

I bought my beans and got out. Still don’t know what it was about or if it is like that everyday when the store opens. Have you seen this in Japan? Can anyone help me explain this?

Anyway, about the con job.

Yesterday I had gone for a drive on my scooter and passed through the busy area around my station on the way home. This was around rush hour so there were a lot of cars going slow. With the scooter I made my way around a lot of cars to get through faster. That was when a saw it.

Approaching a mini-van from behind that I couldn’t pass I stopped. Suddenly a young man slides up to the car in front of me from the side walk. In his hand he holds a pair of broken glasses. He then pretends the car hits him and drops the already broken glasses to the ground. This is when he sees me.

Since I slid up fast he hadn’t noticed me until now. Now he realises that I have got him in the act. He walks up to me and looks me in the face, saying something loud like “What!”. Young kid, with wild eyes. I never see much substance abusers here in Japan, but this kid was on something.

I realised that he was going to blame the driver and try to get him to pay for his “broken” glasses. This was at rush hour and I was sitting on my scooter in the middle of the street. I wanted to explain to the driver what I had witnessed but as I was thinking about how I could possible to that in very limited Japanese with an aggressive junkie next to me they started talking and he drove away.

Later I thought the best thing would have been just to get to the driver first. Pointing at the kid and keep talking, maybe this would have scared him off. Japan is known to be a very safe country and it is in terms of violence and robbery. On the other hand there is a lot of fraud on all levels. Almost every week there is a new scandal exposed on TV where someone has taken bribes to award a certain construction company contracts. Old people are getting ripped off in various scams by strangers knocking on the door offering everything from insurance to improving their house for earth quakes. And now this. A classic con job in the street. Did not expect to see it in Japan. Mahalo.