A few days ago, I got dressed for work and walked out on to the stairs in front of my place. Immediately my eyes land on some guy at the base of the stairs. He was filming the stairs and mailboxes with a small black HD camera. This seemed so odd and out of place. I looked down at him and said sternly but politely, "What are you filming?" in Japanese. He didnt answer. He pointed his camera down but just looked icily at me quietly... So I said "Explain yourself!" A little more harshly, but he didnt reply. And so I yelled "Hey, you want me to call the cops?" He kept looking up and just said quietly "Call 'em..." and I found that quite creepy. On the other hand, I had to jump on the train to work and I didn't have time to call the cops--- if I did, I would have to give a statement and everything that would make me late for work. I didn't know a good route, so I just got noisy; yelling at him to get lost or I'd call the landlord. Seething seemed to change in his attitude and he quietly came up the stairs and hissed in a strange husky voice "it's a video shoot" and then went down the stairs again. I swore at him but i had no choice---I left for work. But that wasn't the end of the story.
I came home and read an email from that land-lord's daughter. Apparently the creepy guy was an undercover police office, and he was looking for an illegal immigrant that had been hiding in my neighbor's house. My neighbor is a legal Chinese resident in Japan, but his "girlfriend" was a "lady of the night" that had been stealing money out of customers wallets and other devious things. Apparently the police were undercover trying to prove she actually was living there. I almost blew their cover by yelling at them. They arrested her now though, so that's the end of that odd story.
