Sirens blazing

Armed Robbery on our block! A gang of thieves with bad postures, greasy hair and 3-day stubble held up the liquor store with a kitchen knife and toy gun and made off with several large bottles of expensive sake, witnessed by a dozen high schoolers on their way home, a Mum and businessman who happened to be coming out of the PO at the time.

I was just cruising past the Post Office when I saw the flashing lights and the tiny police woman running across the road ahead of the backed up cars towards the liquor store. Then another car came, and more police.

Okay, so I actually have no idea what was going on, I'm just imaginatively filling in a few missing details, complete with stereotyped 'thief'. This is Japan, so it was probably a teenager shoplifting a carton of cheap sake. That would warrant a 3-car turn-out and half a dozen coppers. After all, I had ELEVEN uniformed and plain-clothes police officers and detectives at my house in about ten minutes when I thought I had an intruder. (In retrospect, it was probably a stray cat).

We drove past the scene of the crime four times, actually, once on the way to pick the girls up from swimming, again on the way to Kanji's shop to warn him to lock his office door, because, you know, thieves go straight from one crime to another, no break, with masses of cops around; again when we went home to get the money I forgot to buy the Hotto Motto dinner I had promised the girls, and again on the way home again.

While walking into Hotto Motto, a police car came screaming around the corner and flashed off up the road in a blaze of screaming lights. It all seemed a bit over the top, as I couldn't discern what on earth they were chasing. Maybe they just never get to use their lights and sirens so figured this was a good chance. Unless they had, in the intervening half hour, actually figured out whodunnit and were going to catch them before they, I dunno, jumped on a ship and sailed to North Korea.

Would be nice to know what was really going on.