I'm sitting in the expansive spaces of Renzo Piano's four-storey airport outside Osaka, sipping an Awake tea from Starbucks and waiting for my bus home. I've chosen to live in Japan for the past 20 years, and I know its rites as I know the way I need tea when feeling displaced, or to head for a righthand window seat as soon as I enter a bus. A small, round-faced Japanese man in his early 30s, accompanied by a tall and somewhat cadaverous man of the same age, approaches me.
"Excuse me," says the small, friendly seeming one; they look like newborn salarymen in their not-quite-perfect suits. "May I see your passport?"
When I look up, surprised, he flashes me a badge showing that he's a plainclothes police officer. Dazed after crossing 16 time zones (from California), I hand him my British passport.
"What are you doing in Japan?"
"I'm writing about it." I pull out my business card with the red embossed logo of Time magazine.
"Time magazine?" says the smiling cop, strangely impressed. "He works for Time magazine," he explains to his lanky and impassive partner. "Very famous magazine," he assures me. "High prestige!"
Then he asks for my address and phone number and where I plan to be for the next 89 days. "If there is some unfortunate incident," he explains, "some terrorist attack" (he's sotto voce now), "then we will know you did it." more
4 comments (read or post your own):
Hmmmm it's in the Graniaud....smells a little fishy!
It's not fishy at all. High profile writers write for and get published in many different newspapers / media outlets. The only thing fishy here is your disrespectful misspelling of a newspaper's name. Is it supposed to be cute? Witty? Because it's neither.
lol....that's priceless.
The Guardian has acquired the nickname 'Graniaud' due to the high number of spelling and grammatical errors that it has published.
I don't think it is meant to be 'cute'. Although it could be seen as perhaps a little witty to people who can appreciate humour, but alas I cannot take credit for it. Maybe one day when your sense of humour has developed to the same level as your sense of outrage, you may appreciate it? Good luck with that.
As for the article itself, I found it a little hard to believe but if you want to believe everything you read in a newspaper, then knock yourself out. The Guardian tends to have a better reputation than many other UK outlets but their left wing bias does tend to cloud their agenda.
What has happened to the comments?
This police state crap has gone too far this time! :)
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