My Meeting with the Japanese Police

After I had already made pancakes for dinner (yes, I surprisingly found pancake batter in Japan) I was informed by some of my fellow international students that we were having a cookout.  For some reason, most people had been previously informed, but it didn't matter much that I didn't have anything to cook since I had already eaten with two of my friends.  But I thought I would be sociable so they wouldn't think I'm some hoity-toity bitch.

Unfortunately, the security guy didn't like us cooking on the grill in the smoking area right next to the Seminar House where we live.  He asked us to move it to the park behind campus.  Now, according to "Master" Yobi - he's the guy with all the information, so he has sort of become Yoda for the rest of us - they had numerous cookouts in the park, in that exact spot, last semester without any problems.

It must not have been our lucky night, however, because when we were about on our second round of burgers and hot dogs (found at an import store across the river from campus) the cops showed up.  Honestly, I didn't even notice them at first.  There were so many of us that we were all having our own conversations, and it wasn't until I turned around that I noticed one group was having a conversation with two Japanese policemen.

Thankfully, we had an RA there with us to follow along with what was going on.  I didn't fully catch everything, but it sounded like someone from the apartments behind our Seminar House called saying we were setting a fire in the park.  They took down our RA's name (no word yet on if he was busted for something) and a count of how many of us were there.  But they were nice enough to let us finish cooking what was still on the grill before we left; they didn't even stick around to make sure we left (which is very strange that they were so trusting).

Shibata-san, one of the two major International Student officials, mentioned that there is a crazy person living in the apartment building who likes to complain a lot about noise and other typical complaints.  He constantly apologizes to this person, but they keep bitching to him, and half of the time it hasn't been us who have been noisy.

As I mentioned before, the smoking area is right next to the Seminar House.  People show up throughout the night, including our security guard, to have a smoke and chat.  Sometimes they make noise, other times I swear the crazy person looks out their balcony, sees people, and decides to complain.  It really pisses off those of us who are getting punished with increasing rules.  We have to leave the smoking area by 10pm now, instead of the initial 11pm, and the security guard pretty much tells us to get inside if it is after 9pm.  We can't even stand in our stairwell or outside our rooms and talk.  And there is a ridiculous rule about not having anyone of the opposite sex in your room after 11pm.  So those of us who make friends with the opposite gender are restricted in when we can talk to one another.

We are pretty sure where this crazy person lives, so we keep our eye on their balcony to see if their light is on.  If it's on, we pretty much act as belligerent as possible up until 9pm, which is about the average time people in that building go to bed; it's not as severe as that sounds, really, we just don't watch our noise level until it hits 9pm.