Skyscrapers in the manufactured cityscape zipped by me as I sped past, pedaling while standing on my basketed bike. Though it was early, the glare of the sun was already bright, and my sweat-drenched white shirt was hardly comfortable. This was the seaside, but it wasn’t the least bit refreshing.
May 27th, 9:05 A.M. Early summer, and already the city was sweltering.
As I frantically pumped the pedals, going click-click-click underneath me, my skirt began to rise up. I was wearing leggings so this hardly mattered, but someone walking by pointed ostentatiously at me, so I tugged the hem down with one hand. Judging from his clothes, the gawker might have been Chinese. Odaiba had been a popular destination for tourists even before 1999, when the casino-integrated resorts (known as IR) opened, but in recent years it had become a veritable melting pot. I’d learned that when you see Asians, it was easier to guess their nationality by their clothes rather than their looks. Fashion sense doesn’t change immediately just because you’ve moved abroad.
The Odaiba Integrated Tourist Facilities District.
In 1993, when the Special Integrated Resort Areas Promotion Act, aka the IR Promotion Act, went into effect, the government decided to try and bring casinos to Odaiba. When IR got going in 1999, there were some issues: domestically-managed casinos weren’t doing well, and Odaiba had become more dangerous as organized crime began to nudge its way in. However, by the time the “integrated resorts” were really picking up steam two years later in 2001, the government had reached its limit with domestically-managed casinos and opened bidding for the management rights internationally, which helped improve the situation. The Hong Kong-based Melto Crown Entertainment’s entrance into the market marked the beginning of the upturn.1 As other foreign firms arrived, domestic corporations copied the operations of the foreign ones, and conditions improved dramatically. This was true with safety as well. A massive infusion of foreign investment diluted the influence of organized crime, and a renewal of the police system, with a focus on the Tokyo Bay Police, decreased the crime rate in Odaiba even as levels elsewhere remained the same.
The overall number of tourists visiting last year surpassed 30 million, and the casinos brought in over two trillion and seventy million yen in annual profits. The Odaiba Integrated Tourist Facilities District had become one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world in both name and reality. Stunning hotels pulse in the vivid spark of LED lights, and there’s no sign of the typically delicate Japanese atmosphere, which has instead been replaced by everyday encounters with cosplaying samurai and ninja, and sushi shops, packed one right next to another, stuffed with specialties developed for the foreign tourists: sushi topped with Sriracha, chocolate sushi, and deep-fried futomaki-ish sushi rolls (if you could even call that “sushi”). One iekei-style ramen chain with pork broth was listed in every foreign guidebook and has itself become an Odaiba attraction, the chain’s shops packed with an endless throng of foreigners. Pawn Alley, a street lined with pawnshops, has also become something of a hotspot.
Because of the nature of my work, I saw people bankrupted by gambling pretty regularly, so I’d never felt the desire to gamble myself, but I had indulged in Cirque du Soleil shows and the occasional swim in hotel pools. Whether you liked it or not, a sense of elation bubbled up from the earth in Odaiba and, for better or worse, made you constantly wired.
The Odaiba Integrated Tourist Facilities District swelled with desire and the currency of foreign countries. It could no longer be contained by the original small patch of land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay and had started to expand like an amoeba. The sound of construction projects reclaiming land echoed across the city. Once a reclamation was complete, another new casino was put up.
I rode along streets far from the gaudy casino area, lined with apartments built by the Urban Renaissance Agency. Eventually I made it to a park built for local residents, not tourists, bordering a city waterway. I hit the brakes, and my poor bike unleashed a loud screech and came to a stop.
The investigative unit had arrived long before I did. I’d been to this park many times before, but the scene had taken on a serious air now that it was lined with police vehicles. I’d been told the park was part of a designated walking path to school for kindergartners, but there was no way they’d be able to use it today. Rubberneckers had gathered around with no clue of what was going on, crowding around a stranger’s misfortune like it was the climactic scene of a movie they didn’t want to miss.
I hated this part of the job.
It was my line of work, and I knew I shouldn’t let something so trivial get to me, but it still hurt every damn time.
I took a deep breath, exhaled all of my gloom, and then stepped over the yellow police tape.
“Excuse me, lady.” A uniformed officer approached me immediately. “You can’t just waltz in here.”
I had anticipated this, so I quickly pulled my police pass case out from my back pocket and opened it with a flip.
“I’m Sergeant Yuri Uguisu with the Tokyo Bay 1st Investigative Unit,” I said. “Reporting for duty.”
“Yeah, right,” the officer sneered. “What the hell is this toy? Keep acting up and I’ll take you in for obstructing an officer!” The officer grabbed me by the back of my neck.
“What? Wait a second! I actually am a police sergeant!”
“Yeah, right. If you want to play cops and robbers, I’ll let you know when I get off work.”
There was nothing I could do. The brawny, uniformed officer was about to throw me out on my ass, so I flailed my hands in panic.
That’s when I noticed a man with a stubbled face watching this pathetic scene with a grin, as though it had nothing to do with him.
“Hey!” I shouted. “Yamaji! Come clear this up!”
“Oh,” Yamaji said and scratched at his disheveled hair. “Yeah, sure.” He placed a hand on the officer’s shoulder. “Officer. Princess here is the genuine article. She’s a career officer on training assignment with the Bay Station. Well, semi-career at least.”
“Huh?” The officer blinked. Still baffled, he finally took a real look at my police ID. He realized it was without a doubt the genuine article. He quickly released me, his superior. His face went pale, and he saluted me. “P-Pardon me, Sergeant Uguisu. I’ve heard your name before.”
What had he heard? I don’t mean to brag, but I was, after all, a legend for setting the record for lowest grades ever in judo, aikido, and arrest techniques at the Police Academy.
“Well,” Yamaji said. “It’s no surprise he made that mistake. You don’t look like police at all. You’re so young. I mean…” The grin on Yamaji’s face started to get wider. “You are cosplaying in a sailor school uniform right now, Princess.”
“C-Cosplay? This uniform is for work! And cut it out with the ‘Princess.’”
He was right about the uniform, but of course I wasn’t dressed up like a school girl because I wanted to. Nonozuki in the Community Safety Section had asked me to help out with an undercover operation in a case involving a pervert who liked to cut off locks of hair from high school girls on their way to school. Recently the culprit had accidentally sliced the neck of one young girl with his knife, resulting in a minor wound, so the case had taken on a greater urgency.
Yamaji, my supervisor, was already well aware of all this. But the bastard had just been laughing it up from the time I got to the scene. And Yamaji was basically a boring old man. He wore the standard police-issue suits until they were threadbare, so I was loath to take any wardrobe criticism from him.
“Your message said to come ASAP,” I protested. “I had no choice but to come as I was!”
“Still,” Yamaji said. “You had enough time for a change of clothes.”
“I didn’t!”
“When women are really embarrassed, nothing’ll stop them from changing. But you didn’t. So what I’m saying is that somewhere deep down inside you thought you’d look good.”