He did all of that because he explicitly wanted to mess with Polnareff, since he knew he was after him for killing his sister. This is just some random nobody that he has no connection to, so he's to go for the kill.
Yeah, he can do all of that, but he still has to know where he is in order to do so, which he doesn't know where he is at the start; neither of them do, and they have to actively search for each other with only vague knowledge on what the other looks like.
All of them revolve around getting close to J. Geil, which is also the latter's win con. No matter what win con Akira chooses, J. Geil's is arguably just as fast.
They aren't in the same building; they are in completely different, random buildings in the town around 300m away from each other. Akira doesn't know about J. Geil's ability, and so he isn't going to know to change clothes.