Police in the station suddenly run up to me. Saying they’re on patrol and want to check for dangerous goods.
This was on Friday on Tokyo where it was crazy stormy and freezing, so I was wearing whatever I had at work to keep me warm.
Layers upon layers of clothes with a hoodie.
Of course I had a mask, everyone had a mask that day.
And my glasses were all foggy.
It was 6pm and I was on my way home from work at a school nearby.
I told them this and that if students see them checking me it will look really bad.
Then he says to me “so you’re a teacher”?
I say “yes”
And he asks me for some ID to prove it.
I supposed him my shakaihoken.
He says ok and let’s me go.
My question is.
What did he really want to check when stopping me?
26 comments
He has a quota of people he’s supposed to stop and check. He decided to check you. I was expecting it about a 2 weekends ago when absolutely smashed I got to the train station and they were patrolling and doing stop and searches of what looked like young women with backpack purses.
They ignored me.
> What did he really want to check when stopping me?
Nothing. He wanted to impress his superiors who have assigned him a quota of people to stop, and to show onlookers how diligent he is.
Good job pointing out how being questioned by a police officer in public makes the questionee look bad. These cops who use innocent members of the public as training dummies need to be reminded of this.
Common in Japan.
They will stop random foreign in Japan and check for ID. Who knows? They might hit a jackpot and find that gaijin with expired visa.
Are you telling this story because you are… what? disappointed in Japan?
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You’ve been living here for 7 years this is the least crazy story I’ve heard about police stopping people in the street, it was a very mild exchange.
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But if this affected you in any way, sorry you went to a random police exchange…
Haven’t been carded by the cops since 2009, but I figure now I just show them the gaijin card so they have no reason to further look into my life and for things of interest that I may or may not have.
It’s hilarious but what you wear makes a huge difference in getting stopped. The closer your clothes make you look to some caricature of a dodgy person, the more solid a “suspect” that makes you.
In reality of course, all the real crooks would actually be Japanese, wearing suits and ties and carrying briefcases, blending in nicely to the crowd of salarymen. Why? Well have you ever seen that archetype stopped by police? It’s pretty much airtight. If you wanted to traffic drugs and weapons, that’s how you’d do it.
Cops are assholes. Glad he didn’t push further. They can be aggressive and try to rip through everything you have, even though that is illegal to do without permission or warrent.
Next time be aware you can both demand them to show a warrant for searching you, and their ID if they try to Zairyuu card check you, but be careful. Best to avoid these pigs.
I once got stopped by the same police officers twice in the space of about ten minutes. The first time I told them I was on my way home, and the second time they wanted to know why I wasn’t home yet. I spent the entire time in between walking towards my home.
> My question is. What did he really want to check when stopping me?
Happens to me all the time (small town) and isn’t really a big thing. The cops are allowed to stop you and ask for ID.
My experience is:
– 100% of the time when I show them my ID upfront they have zero interest in me… unless (for example) in the case of one cop, they had a wedding in my birth country and wanna talk about it for 2 hours.
– My ex-wife ALWAYS calls the cops on me before I do (court-ordered) visitations with my daughter. ALWAYS! She’ll say she feels threatened, I have a history of violence/paedophilia (none of this is true) and that she fears I’m gonna abduct our daughter (who she abducted! Which is the only reason we have this fucked up situation in the first place). Anyhow, the first few times she did this we had armed cops surrounding our meeting point (tiny town), trying to pretend they weren’t there to observe me. After a few visits where I showed them my ID and explained the situation, they gave up and told my ex-wife to get fucked (pretty sure she’s now on their list of Karens, or whatever the Japanese equivalent is).
– On the other hand if I challenge the cops or try to avoid them, they’ll hunt me down and make my life hell. In one case I’d been working for ~2 months with a horrible ‘flu’ (felt like crap, blocked up, sore throat, sore/irritable…etc but couldn’t clear it as there was no opportunity to have time off work). Cops were clearly slowing down to check me out at about 8pm (just finished work) while I was riding my bike to a ramen shop to get a massive tonkotsu as my comfort food. It was snowing lightly, I had feverish pains all over and I really didn’t feel like stopping to talk to a bunch of pigs about how I’m not part of the Russian mafia (which is part of the story – port town with lotsa dodgy Russians). I decided to turn into a back street and take the back way to the said ramen shop. Within SECONDS, every cop car in the town had its lights blazing and they chased me down into a quiet street. I showed them my ID, said ‘I just finished work and am getting a Ramen’… they pissed off and left me alone.
All towns are different but I’m a tall, athletic northern Italian (have a bit of an eastern European look about me). Cops stop me to check whether I’m a Russian sailor who’s jumped ship from to port in order to do dodgy shit (hint: quite common… the other group we get is North Koreans doing even more dodgy shit such as abducting people from beaches… so Koreans get stopped a lot!) I know I’m harmless and they do too after pushing the question. IMO it’s just something they do (partly because it’s an otherwise boring town with no crime). I don’t hate them for doing their job…
I got stopped by police in Nagasaki yesterday, and the inner American in me was worried, but he just wanted to tell me my backpack was unzipped 😂
Cops doubted and inspect you because you looks bad guy. This is the reason. There is only prejudice and it comes from your LOOKING: HE MUST BE WEIRD! I, Japanese, always feel it’s rude and disgusting af. Even though I’ve never asked by cops
They should apologize and give something like quo-card(500jpy worth) as a cooperation when cops find us we’re not guilty
Happened to me too last week. In Shinjuku station. I was looking at my phone to find a place and 2 cops jumped on me from behind. They searched me and let me go. I guess it’s just random check, or maybe we look like criminals, who knows.
Only solution is to get through the check as quickly as possible. Show them your ID asap. Give ‘em one word answers. If there are two cops they’ll try to play good cop bad cop. Good cop will probably be like “wow your Japanese is so good! So did you study here?”. Don’t respond to any questions outside what’s necessary. Look annoyed. DONT give em any information that is not required (job, place of work etc).
Remind them you’re busy and have somewhere to be. Look annoyed and keep looking at your watch/ phone time etc.
Yes, police officers have a legal right to stop people when they are investigating an area (Japanese, foreigners… everybody). This is called 職務質問 (しょくむしつもん) in Japanese. Police officers write reports when they work so they sometimes investigate areas even when no obvious crime has been committed, especially when they have nothing to do. That day, when that officer was writing a report, you happened to be one of the “chosen ones”. For normal people like you and I, it may be seen as a nuance, especially if you are doing nothing wrong but it’s necessary for the police officer’s duties. The police officer is just doing their job to protect people. It’s a good thing for society when you think about it.
I have a friend who is a policeman. They told me that for the sokushitsu the instructions are to check people that wear clothes that does not look like theirs, do not fit properly or have many layers.
The reason is that criminals who usually scam or rob others in Japan do that to change look quickly and disappear.
Seems like you were stopped fot this reason!
The best thing about the pandemic has been the lack of these stupid, harrassing police “checks”. I can walk from my home to the supermarket without being told that it’s suspicious for a foreigner to be in a decidedly non-touristy area, and then having to prove that I freaking live here. I am visibly physically disabled, which makes me more of a target than average. Of course, any police officer will deny that these “checks” are based on appearances, but it’s the pattern, not any specific individual incident, you know? I had to plan any venture outside my apartment such that it was not within a few hours of work, lest I get stopped by police and made late for my job. I wouldn’t put it past them to not allow me to call the office to explain.
Ask other people how often they get stopped. Being foreign automatically makes you a target. If you are tall and/or big, you’ll probably be stopped less often than someone smaller and less intimidating to the police (you know, the kind of person these stops are supposedly used for–people the police think are more dangerous are less likely to be stopped, in my experience). Women get stopped more than men, with younger, petite women the most from the foreigners I’ve spoken to (again, directly against crime statistics). You almost never get stopped if you are in a group (either the police are too lazy to check more than one person, or they are scared). And of course, there’s a difference for cities vs the countryside, as well as the personal scruples of the police officers themselves.
I highly recommend asking other foreigners you know, to see how clearly the kind of people they stop the most often have the least statistical connection to crime. I’m sure the police write a reason in their reports, like, “acting suspicious and uncooperative”, but any demographic breakdown of the victims would make their bias immediately clear.
I guess they’ve decided to start doing stops again, though. Ah well. It was nice while it lasted.
Doing his job? Not big deal. They may be super
Bored
You’re a person living in their country just get checked and go about your day, get over it
Immigration status check…
This is normal. This is why we’re told to keep our residence cards on us. I got stopped at a 7/11 ATM a few years back, they were checking “no fraud was happening”, and I just showed the bank card I used, my residence card and done. Japan is so boring (real crime is for the detectives here, not the regular/kouban police), a police officer’s ultimate excitement and job is checking IDs.
I’ve really never had this happen in my 22 years here. I did have one try to approach me at home over a Karen-type neighbor, but gave the police and her double-birds from my genkan while they were standing on the other side of my locked entrance gate a couple years ago. Police probably looked up my name to see the residence registered in my name.
you should have known about the look busy culture in japan when you have been here for so long right. have you not been search at the airport customs just because you look nice?
What’s a big deal? Who cares?
Not me, but I saw two police officers do the same check against a Black-looking guy on Friday at Shinjuku station. I was already waiting around for something so I kept watch and they kept asking him for his residence card.
He just responds with “I’m Japanese.” And yeah, he looked half, maybe a quarter with darker Japanese skin, not uncommon. They just kept pressing him for it not believing that he was Japanese.
The irritation I saw on their faces as he refused to give over a card he doesn’t need to have was astounding. I would have kept watching but they noticed me looking and I didn’t want to put my own visa on the line for someone that was Japanese. Walking away I could just hear more and more yelling from the three of them.
I’ve been stopped twice in 10 years. Both simple and relatively pleasant encounters.
After they お上手ですね you flip the conversation, ask if they speak English, compliment their English, kiss, love hotel, marriage.