On Saturday evening I was walking to the train station with another gaijin who I happened to bump into when we found ourselves in the midst of a bizarre incident. Suddenly we were surrounded on all sides by people wearing red jackets and carrying multicoloured batons which were all lit up and flashing like light sabres. The leader stopped in front of a phone box and made some signal with his hand and 2 people on either side stood with their arms crossed in front of their chest like they were bouncers or something. Excpet they weren't bouncers, they were tiny Japanese old men, and a few women too. Then the younger ones went into the phone box they had "locked down" and started ripping down all the stickers in there that advertise sex lines and so on. It was quite funny really, once we realised whay they were up to. They moved along down the street like this, stopping every now and again to have at some offensive item. The back of their jackets said "we are volunteers" in English, and something in Japanese but it was too small for me to read cos they wouldn't stand still. The moral police I guess. They were harassing the buskers when we left them, asking them if they had permission to be there and so on. How odd. I would have thought that if there was any need for a citizens police force around here it would be a Fashion Police arrangement rather than a moral one... :) They clearly thought they were the bees knees though which made it all the more amusing since they were really plebs in awful jackets failing in all respects to be intimidating at all. Well, it's a pretty awful photo, but maybe you can see an awfully large number of people wearing red jackets here?
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