light vessel automatic

Jesus, what is it with the Japanese? Exactly what argument do they have with me that means that they have to keep messing with my bike? Not three weeks have elapsed since they stole my last one, and now they go and sabotage my new one: I leave it chained to a metal ring in the wall of the parking area of my building, and the Japanese — realising that this time they can’t steal it — decide that if they can’t have it then no-one will. They calmly, deliberately engage the wheel-lock, remove the keys which I, foolishly, left in to shave a few seconds off my morning run to the station, and they disappear into the night with those keys in hand and, probably, a little spring in their step at the deliciousness of what they’ve just done. Perhaps they stop along the way to drop my keys down a drain. Probably they do.

I realise that leaving my keys in the wheel-lock was — with hindsight, and to a limited extent — foolish. The thought had even occurred to me that doing so would make it possible, in principle, for someone to lock my bike and thereby render it unusable. But I dismissed that possibility after a moments’ consideration, because it would be such a completely pointless piece of vandalism — the sort of thing you might expect from the English, or maybe the Belgians — but this is Japan, where it seems reasonable not to expect that sort of thing.

And besides, the bike was barely even visible from the street. So I think it was one of my neighbours who did it. Probably it was the old man who lives next door who packs bin bags and stomps cardboard boxes flat on his balcony at two in the morning, and who I have good reason to suspect eats cats.

Bastard!