Today, after finishing work a bit late, I got suited up and ready to go home. As I left the building, I walked up to my scooter, parked–as always–next to the side of the building. But the helmet wasn’t there. Huh, I thought, I must have left the thing upstairs. Didn’t make too much sense as I usually take it up to the office only when it’s raining, which it wasn’t–otherwise, I lock it to the bolt under the helmet well.

I supposed that I must have absent-mindedly taken it with me this time. So, I turned around, went back up to the office… and it wasn’t there, either. I looked a bit more closely, thought of strange places I might have put it, but… it’s a big item, a full-face motorcycle helmet. You can’t hide it very easily.

At that point, I started considering scenarios about where I could have left it. Did I take it to the elevator, put it on the floor to take off my jacket, and then forget it there? Maybe a student saw it and put it somewhere. Or did I take it to class for some bizarre reason? Or maybe it was in the office, but I put it on a desk without thinking and someone put it away somewhere? I went up and down, trying to figure out where I could have placed it. Nowhere, it seemed.

Finally, I went back out to the bike. Could a car have sideswiped it, hitting only the helmet and knocking it off the bike, depositing it in the street where someone disposed of it? No, there would had to have been more damage to the bike had that happened; at the very least, the mirror would have been bent.

But as I looked more closely at the bike to look for damage, I noticed something: the helmet’s chinstrap clasp was still there. I unlocked and opened the helmet well, and lo, the end of the chinstrap was still locked to the bolt.

All that’s left of the helmet.

Someone had come along with a sharp blade, and sliced the helmet off at the closest possible point to the lock, close enough that barely any strap was left. That would require holding the hemet back while maneuvering in with the blade under the edge of the seat. Probably a practiced hand.

But that puzzled me even more: who would bother slicing off that helmet? Seriously, it’s no prize. About the cheapest full-face helmet I could find, oversized for Japan, and old & worn to boot, the face shield plastic scratched. Not a prize to be coveted, even if they could easily and cheaply replace the sliced chin strap. And they left the clasp, which was hanging by a thread and easy to take–an item which would cost more to replace than just some length of strap. Not to mention that slicing it so close to the lock makes little sense–it’s harder to do and doesn’t seem to help them at all.

There are only two possibilities I could think of. The first is referred to in Japan as “itazura,” a prankster or vandal. I have never understood that mentality: you don’t know this person you’re hurting, will not be around when the deed is discovered, but you will ruin something of theirs or steal it to no benefit of your own, greatly inconveniencing or angering them. Is it the thrill of doing something wrong? I know some people get jollies by imagining how mad someone will be, but seriously, I just don’t get it.

Not to mention that had an itazura wanted to be destructive, they would have been far better off slashing the seat itself, or slashing one or both of the tires. It would have been easier to boot. They didn’t–instead they carted off an old helmet, more work for them, and a much lesser expense to me.

But as I stood out there with a student and staff member who were helping me puzzle it out, another possibility occurred to me. The staff member asked if my scooter would be OK outside overnight, as I couldn’t ride it home. In Japan, it’s illegal to not wear a helmet on a motorbike, so I was kind of stuck. But then I realized that the helmet theft might have been designed to do exactly that: get the scooter to be left outside overnight. The school is not on a major street, but there’s enough traffic out there most of the day to discourage the theft of something as big as a 125-cc scooter. But if the scooter were still there at 3:00 am, then maybe a small flatbed truck loading up a scooter wouldn’t be noticed as much. How to make it stay put? Just slice off the helmet and trash it somewhere so the owner couldn’t ride off with it, and the bike would be much easier to steal later on.

So as a precaution, we made room in one of the building’s storage rooms right nearby and locked the bike up for overnight. Just in case.

Tomorrow I hope to contact the cops at the local koban, not in hopes of getting the helmet back, but instead to alert them as to what’s going on–and maybe they’ll be able to tell me what the most likely purpose of the crime was. But I don’t count on them to do anything about it–not their usual gig, to be honest. In fact, I could have driven the scooter home if I wanted–cops never stop bikes at night except in highly unusual cases; I am pretty sure I could have driven straight home had I wanted. But the night air right now is freezing cold–I’d have been seriously uncomfortable bare-headed (and fully expect to be when I drive the scooter home tomorrow using my spare helmet, which is essentially just a plastic cap).

This is not the first time something like this has happened to me here in Japan. Three and a half years ago, someone stole my last scooter from the parking place on the first floor, carted it off to a shielded location in a nearby mini-park, and stripped it for parts:

A few years earlier, I had to pay for repairs when someone had apparently jammed a screwdriver into the ignition, making it impossible to start. Not an attempt to steal, apparently, but either an itazura having fun, or else a local bike repair shop looking for business. Apparently it was a common enough form of vandalism that current models now have an “itazura guard,” a metal plate you can slide to cover the ignition with by using the back of your key.

Apparently, Japan is not the safest country ever for motorbikes.