My neighbor, as what invited me to the yagi party, comes over and lures me to the dead tree.
He speaks no English. I speak no Japanese. We like each other. I quickly understand that he is asking me to cut down the dead tree. He then takes me over to his house, points out various lights and makes whining noises and fast hand movements. We then go to my house, he identifies the outside lights, and makes the same sounds and movements.
I get it, he is worried that when the tree is felled, it will fall onto either his or my outside lights. This should be avoided.
I go into a long mime of how we can fell the tree such that it falls into the Jurassic vegetation that separates us from the sea. No worries.
Hmmm, my neighbor looks unrequited. I play my trump card – Hisashi! He lives above me and comes down to clear things up.
Here is what is really happening. My neighbor, whose yagi party was to celebrate his retirement from the police force, points out that the dead tree is infested with termites. Said termites sprout wings and cluster in huge numbers around lights at night. This is true.
So let’s cut down the tree to eliminate the termite plague. Simple really.