I called the neighborhood police box for the second time in a week, and once again my call got forwarded to the Izumi Chuo Police Station. The cop who answered immediately asked me if I was okay, which took me by surprise. If I wasn't okay I don't think the neighborhood police box would even be in my top five places or people to call. No offense.
After telling the officer I was totally fine I proceeded to explain that I had just walked by a park in my neighborhood and a small group of high school kids were pulling down their pants and taking pictures. He asked me some obligatory follow-up questions, all of which I was expecting.
Do they have alcohol?
Did you talk to them?
Did you see any indecent exposure?
There were five kids and the rest of the answers were, thankfully, no. Then he asked me for my name. Last week when I called about the high school kids being noisy in the park in front of my house after midnight they didn't ask for my name. I paused for a beat and thought. I had already lied and said I lived by this particular park. I could easily just say I'm not into giving my name. I did that a while back when I called the cops as I watched a dude get beat up in a parking lot on my way to my hotel on a business trip. The cops wanted to know about me and I was like no thanks this looks like yakuza nonsense no thank you.
I gave the cop my last name, figuring it might help him out in getting a patrol car out to the park faster and also to make his reporting easier. Now that I'm becoming a grumpy middle-aged dude who calls the cops on the regular they're gonna need to get to know me anyway.
My neighborhood association duties lasted all morning, eight to noon. Plus I was the MC for the last meeting. Apparently the plan is for me to MC most of the meetings and events going forward. I was not prepared to lead a meeting of all the neighborhood division leaders, but luckily I love improvisation.
I opened the meeting with...
会長、役員の皆様、班長の皆様、本日は町内班長会の司会を務めさせていただきます。フェヤ・ミクロスと申します。どうぞよろしくお願い致します。
At this point I could already feel the twenty-five or so attendees at this meeting thinking, "Oh great, the gaijin's going for it."
まず初めに、皆様のお忙しい中、ご出席いただきまして誠にありがとうございます。本日の班長会では、山の寺第１丁目町内の発展と住民の幸福のために重要な事項について議論を行い、有意義な班長会を進めてまいりましょう。
We went through the meeting agenda, much of which was about the upcoming grass cutting and grass collecting, and I ended the meeting with...
これをもちまして本日の班長会は閉会と致します。
Eri sometimes kindly offers to fill in with neighborhood association duties, but I always say thank you I've got it. Secretly one of my great pleasures in doing it is the chance to engage in nuanced shenanigans.
When I closed the meeting the old guy next to me who is the advisor to the chairman said, "Mmm, formal is good. I never do it like that, but it's good."
Kenzo has three bug boxes. The big one is currently occupied by his three lizards. The medium-sized one is filled with water for some reason. The small one has a broken lid, so we had to improvise. The lizards need food and the small bug box was gonna have to be the delivery mechanism.
Chiyo-chan and her brother Ryota joined Kenzo, Osamu, and me in going down to 1-Chome Park to catch bugs for the lizards to eat. In the end the boys ran amok and I caught a ton of bugs.
Those lizards, in Kenzo's words, "had a feast tonight."
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