Next month, my college moves into a new and bigger building than we’re in now, in part due to the fact that after getting Japan Ministry of Education recognition and the ability to grant student visas has increased our student numbers. (Another might be the fact that a second subway line is opening this summer just a few meters from our doors, and probably rents are going up too high).

One thing that we both will and will not miss (for very different reasons) is the drama going on in the streets around us. We are now located on an east-west avenue in northern east Shinjuku, not too far from Kabuki-cho. As I drove my scooter up to school today, I saw a tall guy standing in front of our building, looking intently down the sidewalk past me, talking on a cell phone. His look instantly prompted the reaction, “yakuza!” He was wearing a well-tailored pinstripe suit, and was tall, beefy and, well, rather yakuza-ish looking.

I pulled into our little side alley and parked, and a staff member who joined us not too long ago was observing from the alley way, noting surprise. He told me that someone had just chased a woman (who was at that time nowhere I could see), shouting at her. I replied, “well, maybe not too surprising considering the number of digits some gentlemen in this area have,” referring to the well-known yakuza habit of chopping off one’s pinky as a show of contrition or as punishment. And sure enough, when we looked at the hands of the men in front of our building (a guy in a jogging suit had joined the pinstripe guy), one of them was missing a pinky. Yow.

Actually, in recent days, the yakuza are not as prominent around these parts as they used to be. In the past, every few months we’d suddenly get about a half-dozen and more expensive sedans parking in the immediate area, each one guarded by a beefy yakuza-looking guy standing next to it. The cars would bring and then take away suited men also apparently of the yakuza persuasion. I heard second-hand that there was some incident a year ago, and the police cracked down on the area soon after that, maybe that’s why they moved their meetings somewhere else.

Not that any of this presents a risk to us or our students. In the ten years we’ve been in this location, I have never heard of a single instance of anyone in the student body or the faculty being harassed in any way by these guys; they seem to stick to their own business. Still, it adds a dash of adventure to the environment. Like I said, this is one reason to like the area–often some excitement happening without any real danger–but also is probably not a bad reason to be glad we’re moving to a new location.