Third encounter with the police, search. Ocean coast

What are you gonna do… Third time this month. I found an outlet near some sawmill, sat down to write a blog post. An old man came over, said something in Japanese and pointed at the bike. — Wakarimasen (I don't understand). — Wakarimasen?! — He repeated it with the kind of intonation a Russian grandpa would use to say "You bastard, now you're gonna bite too?!" Then he left. Just in case, I moved to another spot and relocated my bike. Ten minutes later a police car pulled up, then another one.

Three policemen are walking toward me. I keep my passport in my laptop bag, which is on my lap right now since I'm writing a blog post. This situation isn't new to me, so I just wanted to silently hand them my passport.

— Good afternoon. — it was around two. — Hello. — I changed my mind about giving them the passport, I felt like playing around. — How's it going? They didn't jump straight to the point of their visit, starting with small talk, just like last time. — Oh, you're traveling by bicycle? — Yes. — Where are you headed? — To Kagoshima. — Where did you start from?

Meanwhile another car pulled up, and two guys in pants and white shirts got out. In total, about five people gathered around me. A heavy-set man in plainclothes immediately started talking about the main issue. — Your passport. — My passport? And who are you? — actually I wasn't sitting on private property anymore, I was just curious how they'd behave. The plainclothes guy caught himself and pulled a badge from his pocket with "Police" written on it and a photo. I handed him my passport. The other four watched what was happening. — You're probably police officers, and these two are FBI and I'm a terrorist. — No, no, we're the same. — the older policeman explained to me, making a hand gesture that everything was okay.

After we figured out who I was, where I'm from, where my visa is and how long I'll be in Japan, they politely offered to search my bags. It really did sound like an offer I could refuse. When I slowly said "no problem," one of them, catching only the first "no," asked again. — No? — Please. — I gestured with an open palm inviting them to proceed to the bags. Sometimes blogging allows me to look at things through the lens of a camera, without getting mentally attached to the situation. Instead of "they're about to rummage through my stuff," the thought "this'll make a great shot, it's an interesting story" flashed through my head. For the same reason I appreciate moments when the camera battery dies and I can just enjoy beautiful views. The policemen are very polite and even show that they feel awkward about detaining me. Ten-year-old schoolkids walk past us and say hello, the police greet them back. — You can start here. — I open a bag of dirty laundry for the policeman. — The drugs are in here. — No-no, — he asks me to put the bag aside. — please open this bag. I open my backpack for him, he takes out a bag with chargers and feels it without looking inside. — Boom! — I continue my game. The policeman, smiling, looked at me and set the bag aside. — Is this your first time being checked by police? — Yes.

When the superficial search was finished, they returned my passport. Now the conversation turned to where you can sit and where you can't. — This isn't private property. Private property ended over there. The policemen hesitated and exchanged glances. They were so gentle and polite that I decided to stop joking with them after the search, I was just curious. One of them went to the car and came out with a prefecture atlas. — You can go over this bridge across the river. — he flipped a page. — go along this road. — he flipped two more pages. — there's a tennis court here. I needed to finish a couple paragraphs and upload everything online, about half an hour's work, I wasn't going to ride to some tennis court for that. — I'll sit here, — I pointed to a railing two meters from the road, — this isn't private property. They hesitated again and talked among themselves in Japanese. Then the heavy-set plainclothes guy turned to me with a disarming look. — But they might call us again, and we'll have to come back. — If they call you, I'll leave. — but I understood everything, they were called in and now they needed to do something — solve the problem, at least visually, for the report.

They talked again, then we agreed that I'd sit by the bridge. We shook hands and parted ways. Overall I can say that police in Japan are a friend to the people. I can judge this by two things. First, people call them even for such trivial matters, which means they trust them. Second, the children who walked by and said hello clearly don't associate a person in police uniform with a mean uncle. Meanwhile the sun started to set. I'm riding along the highway by the shore in the tsunami zone. The ocean, capable of rising above land to a height twice as high as the tallest Kremlin wall, capable of crashing tons of water onto a city, taking hundreds of lives with it, this ocean is now serene, playing tag with the coastal breakwater. A red moon is rising above it. It looks like a sunset in reverse.

I wonder how people live here knowing the ocean could take their house away at night. Along the highway runs a railroad, and beyond it a deep ditch. In the darkness I saw a turn toward the sea. The road leads down and there are lights of residential houses, beyond the houses another climb — it's a steep shore separating residential areas from the sea. I knocked on a door.

— Sumimasen, camping, where is there camping here. — my vocabulary was exhausted at this point, and I could only understand gestures and intonations. An old lady pointed somewhere sideways into the courtyards. — Three kilometers that way. — Onsen? — No, no onsen. Wait, let's do shower. This was a gift from fate, two days ago I washed in a lake, and last night I could only wipe myself with wet wipes. — Are you hungry? — she said right after the shower. — Thank you, I have noodles. — Noodles? Come here. They brought me a plate with pea soup, rice, tofu and cabbage that looked like Korean kimchi, just not as spicy. — Eat, all together. Take some rice, then tofu, finish with cabbage. — she saw that I was going heavy on the tofu. — What are you doing?! Here, here! — This was her reaction to me adding soy sauce to the rice, when I should have added it to the tofu. — Is this kimchi? What kimchi? This is [name].

Due to not knowing Japanese, I couldn't ask her all my questions about tsunamis, I'll definitely ask someone else in these parts. Fed and washed, I rode off to the campground where I spent the night alone. That was yesterday, and now I'm riding along the ocean shore again.