Palden Nishizawa joins a chase
Before a shift at McDonald’s, Palden Nishizawa heard someone calling for help catching a pickpocket.
Before the story
Comedian Palden Nishizawa (ラヴドライブ・西澤パルデン) recalls an incident from when he worked part-time at a McDonald’s in Kabukicho.
Before my shift
Palden Nishizawa here. This happened when I was working part-time at a McDonald’s in Kabukicho.
I was riding my bike through the area when a man who looked about thirty came running toward me. Behind him, an office worker who looked about forty was running flat out.
I listened, and the office worker was shouting, “Pickpocket! Pickpocket! Somebody catch him!”
I turned my bike around and went after the pickpocket.
The office worker kept shouting. Students, office workers, young people—before long, fifteen or sixteen people had joined the chase. There I was on my bike, with the whole group running behind me.
Then I noticed something odd about where they were looking.
They were all looking at me.
I stopped. I wanted to tell them, “I’m not the pickpocket.”
The instant I stopped, they grabbed my arms and held me by the neck.
The office worker who’d been robbed came to my rescue: “What are you doing? The pickpocket’s over there! Not this foreign guy!”
After all that, I went to work. When I came out into the seating area, a high school girl sitting there said loudly:
“Hey, isn’t that the foreign pickpocket from earlier?”
All around her, the customers snatched the wallets on their tables out of sight.
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