Chinatown.

Today I went with my Japanese friend Ayaka and Jennifer to Chinatown to go shopping and for lunch. Chinatown is essentially two blocks but it has everything my heart desires. Namely cheap rice noodles and Chinese food. YUM.
It was a nice lovely afternoon but there were two very strange and uniquely South African things we observed.
The first was that the shop owners had pooled their money together to hire a security firm to watch over the street. There were two armed guards, one in a watch tower, one wandering around, in bright orange shirts that read “Bad Boyz security” (I kid you not.) Not only that, but they had one machine gun that they passed between them. Since guns are illegal in Japan Ayaka was rather shocked.
The second was the arrival of Immigration while we were having lunch. At first I thought, ‘oh, random sweep,’ but then the restaurant owner told us that they come by once a week to get money from the shops. Jennifer and I were shocked but Ayaka shrugged her shoulders. She told us about how she had been pulled over once when driving and even though she is an exchange student and all her papers are in order, she had to pay off the police officer before he would let her go. Of course, the Immigration officers just ignored me and Jennifer.