You’re not japanese enough.
Weird news from the japanese front.
A few days ago, a lady was arrested in Saitama. The reason? She was walking in front of the police box (mini police stations in the streets), and the policemen inside thought that she looked foreign.
They asked her for her passport. She replied “I’m japanese”, and went her way. The policemen were not satisfied, and stopped her, bringing the girl back to the policebox. After keeping her, and asking her questions she wouldn’t answer, they decided to arrest her for “not having her papers”.
You see, here in Japan, foreigners are required by law to have their papers on them. Japanese, however, don’t have any “papers” per se, so the girl didn’t had anything to prove her identity other than her word. (By the way, the police is not really allowed to go around questioning people unless they have some reason to believe a crime has been commited - but police in japan is known to ignore that when it come to foreigners).
In the end, they let the girl go after her mother came to the police box. But this was after holding her prisoner for about 30 hours.
Links for the news:
In english and in japanese. Food for thought.
March 3rd, 2006 at 8:02 am
e ai, no japao nao tem o famoso “danos morais”? fiquei curiosa, aqui no brasil europa e eua, ia ser um prato cheio para pedir,. abuso, ato ilegal, prisao indevida.. tudo que precisava.
PS: ve nao anda sem doc viu estrangeiro?
March 4th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
For me, I heard from a Japanese friend that late night checkups are common around Hongo campus. And when he was checked, the police has commented (in a lighter vein) “At this hour, they are either Todai students or burglars” :-p. But this can depend on the area too I guess.
I was questioned once when riding back home at 1:45am, with a chair I got free from a friend of mine. But they questioned several Japanese too, almost all who passed them at the time. Think it was connected to an incident.
March 5th, 2006 at 11:33 am
Whoa! Scary.
If I were the girl I would probably hurl a few abuses at them in Chinese, Korean and English before leaving.