Word: tokiwadai
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...before 7:30 p.m., Kunihiko Miyamoto was busy dealing with the day's crisis - helping a housewife who'd lost the key to her bicycle lock. It was the standard dramatic police work for the 53-year-old Miyamoto, who manned a station on a commuter train line in Tokiwadai in northern Tokyo. Miyamoto was the sort of police officer who helped elderly pedestrians pass the train crossing, and kept an eye out for the drunken salarymen who, buzzed from a night of office imbibing, threatened to take headers off the platform. "He held the safety of the people...
...Miyamoto's death was mourned and his sacrifice celebrated in tiny Tokiwadai and throughout Tokyo. His koban was stuffed with flowers and cards from well wishers, and his colleagues lost track of the number of people who signed Miyamoto's condolence book. While Miyamoto was still in the hospital, students at a nearby elementary school delivered hundreds of folded cranes, a traditional get-well gift. "He was a stout man with caring eyes," remembers a tearful 73-year-old Yoshie Ikeda. "He always called out to me, saying 'Take care!'" Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Miyamoto's police station...
...people who live and work around Tokiwadai will have to get by without Miyamoto looking out for them - and as the city closes down the kobans, omawari like him will become a vanishing breed in Tokyo. The government needs to cut its budget, but it will be a shame if cops like Miyamoto are lost in the process. "Police officers are always in uniform so there's usually some distance from us," says Kawano the grocer. "But he wasn't like that. He was more like a pal." He was also a hero. Reported by Yuki Oda/Tokyo
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