A resolution to a mystery

Saturday night I have a return of my wannabe burglar. This time I turn my light on and call my upstairs neighbour. Thankfully he answers and jumps up immediately and runs outside to investigate. I fully expected the intruder to be gone, scared off by the light, but my neighbour discovers him still standing in front of my window, hands in pockets as though contemplating something. He recognises him as one of the teachers from a school I have taught at this year and calls out "Sensei!" to him at which point said sensei runs off. Neighbour gives chase, probably behind him by about 15 metres or so and calling out to the teacher by name to stop. They run for about 500 metres I guess before sensei disappears up a narrow alley or somesuch and my neighbour doesn't want to follow cos it is pretty dark and he doesn't know the area at all. But he has seen his face and knows for sure who it was. At the time all this is going on I am running around the house perimeter trying to find my neighbour who had yelled for me to get outside before he gave chase.

Eventually my neighbour returns, puffing, and tells me the name of the troublemaker. We are both heaps surprised and shocked at who it is. I am tempted to call the police immediately but my neighbour thinks we are better off giving this bloke a chance to sort his shit out privately. If we tell the police he will lose his job and never be able to find another one. This teacher is in all other respects, a nice guy. So we call his mobile, which he of course doesn't answer, and we leave a few angry messages (we are pretty riled up what with all the action) requesting that he call us back and meet us tomorrow morning to discuss this or we will tell the police. We go back to bed (not for sleep in my case) and wait for the morning.

Come 9am Sunday morning there has been no phone call. I decide to go the police and am just leaving the house when my neighbour calls. We discuss the options and what to do for a while. We drive around the area where we know this teachers lives and look for his car. We leave another message asking him to call us. My neighbour says let's leave it til 11am and then if he doesn't call we'll tell the cops. (The reason for so much hesitation on our part about telling the cops is more than just the hassles it will cause our crim, but the hassles it will cause for us - or more particularly my neighbour. The police here are very distrustful of gaijin who don't come from white western countries and will likely not believe my neighbour, or at least cause him heaps of hassle by coming to his school and questioning him a lot. He had one such experience once when he witnessed a car accident and wasn't keen to repeat it. Plus there was the concern that the cops would do nothing at all). At about 10:30 my neighbour gets a call from sensei; Help me please. We agree to meet at 11am in the carpark of our apartment. From there we drive to a nearby restaurant and sit in a secluded area. At this point I am feeling quite like laughing because it's so like a bad movie. We are sitting, the three of us, in the booth of a smokey diner with morose expressions on - we could be about to rob the joint. I leave all the talking to my neighbour and he does a good job. The sensei explains why he was at my window - an explanation which seems a little dubious upon reflection but which I will take because I don't want to think about the alternatives. I won't elaborate here because who knows who is reading this. Needless to say, it will provide for a good story when I return home!

The thing was resolved anyway. Sensei won't be coming to my window any more and he is contrite as all hell. Just another weekend in sleepy Kamogata town!