Prison in Japan: Part 2 “The Beginning”
Blue on Feb 06 2007 at 12:00 am | Filed under: Japan: Life
This is the second part of a gaijin in Japan’s (George’s) experience in a Japanese Ryuchijyo (留置場, Prison for people that haven’t yet been convicted of any crime). For better understanding of the background of his story, read Prison in Japan: Part 1 before reading the continuation below. The following was published directly out of George’s journal that he meticulously wrote while he was in Prison in Tokyo (only some tenses have been changed for continuity of reading, along with place names that may risk George’s anonymity).
From here, is part two of the series - George’s account of “The Beginning”:
My time in the detention center started on the evening of September 1 2006, just two days after my 36th birthday. The day I turned myself in started well, although I was still very anxious with regret for what had I had done and probably still anxious from the amount of alcohol consumed on my birthday, 2 nights before. My wife whom I had consulted with about my dilemma the night before made me a small but nice breakfast of eggs and fruit bread. I left early on my motorbike to settle the mater of updating my gaijin card and finished up at the kuyaksho (City Hall) at around 9:30am. Immediately after arriving home I took our youngest boy to his grandparents home just across from the station and my wife drove me to the *location withheld* Police Station. With my oldest boy having already gone off to kindergarten, we arrived at the station at around 10am. From there my day went badly, worse than I could have possibly imagined.
After a fairly short while it was verified that a complaint had been lodged at the Shirakawa Police Station (in Kotoku, Tokyo) over an incident that had occurred in the early hours of Thursday morning, August 31st. Around 4am. It had never occurred to my wife or I that simply going to the Police with an envelope of money and a strong apology to the complainant would not be enough to settle the matter, but it quickly dawned upon me how much trouble I was in. My wife had to leave at around midday to look after the kids and at around 12:30 I was driven in a secure car (meaning one that I could not get out of) to the Shirakawa Police Station. The first person there was not at all in a friendly mood. A young detective acted as a weak translator and my interrogation began at around 1pm. It did not stop until I was officially arrested and I had signed my own arrest warrant at 10:12pm.
Through that day the detective in charge (hereinafter the “DIC”) concentrated on getting me to agree to things that were (to me) patently untrue. I attacked the driver. I was living on the breadline, struggling to feed my wife and 2 kids. It had complained the taxi fare was too expensive and refused to pay. I acted violently and stole the taxi drivers money, phone and pushed him to the ground causing a serious head injury, before fleeing from the scene. From the outset of the interrogation I had come to realize that my version of the events was clearly different from the taxi drivers. I hadn’t at all contemplated another version of the truth until then. What a naive bastard. Nor had my wife or mother in law whom I had consulted and both of whom were expecting me home. We just assumed that my truth was the right and only “truth”. This put me in a fairly scared and even more anxious state throughout the day as I tried to stop the DIC from entering his own version of events into the record and getting him via my fairly average Japanese and my not so helpful translator to put the truth as I saw it on record.
This took a remarkably long time as the DIC seemed disinterested in hearing my side of the story. He continued to misinterpret the facts and it was 10pm before we finally had a fairly good record that covered both my “motive” (if you could call it that) and the events as I remembered them that lead up to the result: a bloodied taxi driver who had not been paid his fare and whose mobile phone had been taken from him. We both agreed that taking someone’s mobile phone was theft. I agreed with the results and this was why I had gone to the *location withheld* Police Station that morning: to pay amends and find a kind a settlement to say sorry.
After a grueling day mentally and verbally jousting with the DIC I entered cell #6, which would become my home for the next 22 days. Walking through the cellblock seeing each cell with 3 or 4 men lying on their futons, I had a strange feeling like I was in a movie. As I entered my cell I briefly caught the eye of a bulky looking Japanese man (who the next day I immediately recognized as non-threatening) and also another man who the next day I would find out was in fact Chinese. He also seemed okay based on the half-second eye contact we had. The day of anxiety finally ended when I closed my eyes and drifted into a deep sleep in my 10 foot by 15 foot cell with two other “suspects” of other crimes, exhausted and happy to have a futon to give me comfort. I laid my futon out near the door as I didn’t want to intrude and I slept remarkably well despite the stress and despite the lack of food other than a horrid cold bento at 10:20pm, and after my signature and fingerprint was logged on my official statement. I was entered into the detention center as inmate number 14 and handed a pair of slippers with my number neatly stenciled on top.
Day two started with a basic wash and shy hello to my cellmates. I followed the actions of the other cellmates and also quickly realized the bulky one was definitely a friendly guy, as was the Chinaman who I realized could not speak very much Japanese. This was the first day of “the rituals”. The rituals included how to fold your futon, how to kneel at the “tenken” (headcount), how to prepare your meal mats, the speed with which we ate, the way to return your bowls and bento trays, the order for cleaning the room and so on.
As most of the inmates were sleeping when I had come in and only a few were still out when I had been washing, there was a buzz that circulated as I (a 190cm tall, 90+kg westerner) walked out past the cells to return my futon to the cupboards. I could hear the words “Amerikajin” and “dekai” (tall/big) as I passed them going back to my cell. An uppity and quite skinny young guy was jumping excitedly saying “konnichiwa” and eyeballing me like a freak. Another 2-3 tough looking guys just gave me a nod or a slight raise of their brows as their way of saying hello. It was all quite weird but it was kind of cool to be given some positive (or at least, not negative) attention as compared to the DIC and his mediocre translator who didn’t show me any love at all.
A crappy bento breakfast was followed by the offer of a cigarette (declined) and shaving session - that they liked to call “undo” (exercise). Standing on a caged balcony with 4-5 other inmates and 2-3 guards, I took the chance to stretch while the guards quizzed me on who I was. They asked a lot of questions but never breached the question of how I got there. This continued over the next few days as guards and inmates alike would quiz me on my home country and my background, giving me a happy sense that all was not so bad. In fact the people were genuinely being very nice. I was being told how big and strong I must be and how my home country is so wonderful and all the usual compliments that Japanese give when they meet a gaijin for the first time, and it appeared to me that a foreigner of western origin must be a rarity in the prison system of Japan. I repeated the same conversations about my home country, sports, family and my time in Japan with the changing of the guards and whenever I had the chance to “meet” other inmates over our ‘exercise’, wash or bath or, over the first few days, any moment I happened to pass some of their cells.
My main cellmate was a nice fellow from Kyushu named Wajima-san. He was short and stocky, in fact quite fat with a spare tire and a half neatly set around his mid-section. He kept to himself a lot but made sure we got things done in proper order and in timely fashion. Aged 35, he was living in Tokyo after moving from Kyushu some years ago and was in the system for the first time. True or false I don’t know but I’d guess this was for real. His charge was robbery, which he quite readily admitted. He saw an opportunity to make some money and he took it. ¥1 million worth of Nintendo game software was sitting in the warehouse in which he worked and he figured that they needed to be sold. He pocketed around ¥300k but within a few days it was fairly obvious to his bosses that he had done it. In fact not long after he had started making sales to shops in Akihabara, he had some sort of accident on his bicycle and jarred his back. He could not go to work for a week and was laid up in hospital when his boss decided to check his locker at work where, low and behold, lay a stack of gaming software that he hadn’t yet been able to take home. That was some 19 days before I met him and the poor guy had no money to even to buy his bento for lunch (¥500 per day) and he ate the two white bread rolls, with margarine, jam or chocolate spread from plastic sachets every single day for lunch. Not to forget the small bowl of hot water that made the meal complete. When the guards weren’t watching I sometimes offered him parts of my bento but he never once took it. It was of course, against the rules and we could have both get in trouble if caught. There was to be no sharing of anything between inmates. This was due to the potential for bullying, gambling and entrepreneurial commerce. I didn’t want to get him in trouble so I eventually gave up the frequency of the offers.
With no money to even pay for his lunch, when poor Wajima had finished his detention period, he of course did not have money to pay fines and was forced to remain in the detention cells until some time well after I got out, as the courts were apparently full. Last I heard they had scheduled him for a court hearing sometime in October, a full two months after he got in.
The Chinaman was none to clever but was also a person with a good heart. His was predictably a visa violator as he had been working and living in Japan for several years with no visa. He had actually disposed of his passport as soon as his temporary visa had expired, meaning it was going to be a while in the “system” before he caught a one-way flight back to China. On my first morning it was a bit of a shock as the Chinaman had a heart attack of sorts. It was hard to tell if it was for real but eventually the guards fetched his medicine for him and fed him some pills as he rolled about on the floor around the door of the cell. Wajima and I were temporarily transferred to cell 4 where the hyperactive young guy was jumping around at the excitement and the Chinaman was carried off to hospital. The hyper kid whom I nicknamed “noisy” and his scary looking shaved head friend had thought it was me that was having the heart attack. I realized Noisy and Scary were also Chinese as they gave words of encouragement to the Chinaman as he was taken away. Noisy kept bouncing from wall to wall of the cell as he struggled to calm down. Scary just sat there with his shaven head looking scarily at the floor, a broken toe bent out into the air pointing directly at me. They started to quiz me on who I was as we had not yet been introduced. They also quizzed Wajima on the Chinaman’s ailment, which they judged predictably enough was a “weak heart”. On one other occasion before I got there he had had a seizure and it seemed there was a real risk of death if he didn’t get his pills in time. My Chinese friend had already been in detention for 3 months and was in for the long haul.
It turned out that there were at least 6 or 7 Chinese in the cells and Noisy was the noisiest of them all. There were times it felt like we were in Hong Kong with all the chatter between the cells in a foreign language. I smiled wryly as I recalled the newspapers talking up crime by foreigners but my experiences so far were confirming the stereotypes. (Even on the first day as my wife and I waited for confirmation that a complaint had been filed, there was an altercation between some African pimp, and Pakistani or Iranian or middle-eastern guy and a very skanky looking eastern European fellow. Then there was just me, with no one else in the station other than cops and my wife at that time).
Anyway, eventually as the excitement of the near death Chinaman quieted down, Wajima and I were returned to our cells and then I was then hauled away for further questioning.
Just prior to the Chinaman being moved to a detention facility at the immigration center another roommate arrived. This was on Day 4. The new guy looked like a typical tough guy in the working class world. Quite a cool feel to him, a workingman tan, a goatee and a shockingly unfashionable super-baggy pair of suit pants with a matching jacket of a drab gray pinstripe nature. The type you see creeps wearing outside the sleaziest hostess clubs as they tout for loser punters. Clearly my first guess was that Hakamada had been arrested outside some shit hole clubs in the world of mizushobai. It turned out he was in the construction business. More correctly “destruction” business as his day job was tearing down old buildings with his digger and work crews. His night job seemed to be destroying his fragile home life by getting in drunken brawls and subsequently being arrested.
Again, I really quite liked this guy, as he was just so extremely positive about life. He had a genuine friendly nature and easy way of talking as if we were old friends, but I did get the sense that if he were not on your “side” you might not feel the same way. Anyway as he never got drunk nor attacked me, I liked the guy. From the start he was actually quite courteous. He entered our cell, promptly got down on his knees, bowed his head to the floor and introduced himself as Hakamada with a yorohsiku onegaishimasu to follow. I got the feeling he was a well-meaning person with such a humble introduction. I soon learned after chatting that this was in fact his 14th time to do the exact same thing. The last time being a 10-month stint in a “real prison” for the same reason as this time - violence. Basically he was a brawler who you could tell that he liked his women and booze, and that he would never back down from anyone or anything. Rather than being more courteous than the rest of us with that fancy introduction, he was just vastly more experienced!
Being a fairly good-looking fellow, our new friend Hakamada clearly did well with the ladies. He had spent some time destroying buildings in Taipei and had a Chinese girlfriend coming to visit him all the way from Taiwan in October. She would have probably needed to change those plans as I got the feeling that Hakamada would not be processed for a long time. I felt a very small tinge of pity for the poor girl but not as much as for his wife, and 2 ex-wives who were coping with his 7 kids. In fact his current wife had been the one who called the cops on him with an accusation of domestic violence (and, not for the first time). She was not going to make amends, until she realized that they had also investigated him for some unpaid fines, and also stung him for a yakuza related crime and kept him detained. Apparently she had set him up a couple of times and the guards all liked him, as he was not really beating his wife. Rather, she just wanted him out of the house. True or not, I’ll never know, but as a cellmate the guy was great. He laughed, like we all did, about our individual predicaments and he had a real spark for life.
Editor’s note: Once again, thanks to George for letting us publish his private journal. It is a colourful account of what he went through, giving us a glimpse of a world, which most hope never to see.
If you have any comments about George’s story, or any of your own experiences, feel free to leave a comment below. Come back soon for part three!
Update: Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 and Part 10 of the “Prison in Japan” series are now available.
Other stippy.com articles possibly of interest:
51 Responses to “Prison in Japan: Part 2 “The Beginning””
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Thanks for sharing this with us, George, it’s fascinating and something I’ve never really read about before.
[...] Stippy has posted Part 2 of Prison in Japan, a firsthand account of a foreigners experience in a Ryuchijyo (Pirosn for people that haven’t been convicted of any crime). [Link] [...]
I read part one a few days ago, and I didn’t think this was going to be much of a story. Despite my low expectations, this “installment” (if that’s what it’s called) was really entertaining, and gave a very good insight into your time in the inside with that personal touch.
I am ashamed at myself for how morbid I am, in the fact that I want to read about someone else’s bad experience. But, hopefully you going through this will convince the rest of us to be good boys for a while. Thanks.
If anyone was interested in the whole idea of ‘habeas corpus’ ( you know, that thing that’s suppose to make the system tell you what they’ll charge you with in a speedy manner?), here’s a great Japanese-English translation:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1488385
Off to read the first installment now… .
Interesting article, but the use of the term ‘Chinaman’ is pretty out of date, and would be considered offensive by most Chinese and even Asians. I hope your Japanese is more diplomatic than your English!
George, what sort of contact did you have with the outside world? Was your wife able to bring you stuff like food and books etc? I think I’d go crazy if I couldn’t read some books in my spare time…
BTW, “chinamaan” is a racist term. You should update your vocabulary to past 1945.
Yeah calling someone a chinaman is pretty rude but this isn’t the guy who built the fucking railroad. this is some guy who ignores the laws of another country so respectful speach is not required for him. I Hate the fact that I have to jump through the imigration loop holes here in Japan and a bunch of low lifes come and fuck off and make it harder for me to be respected and trusted. I say send every one of the mother fuckers back to China and let China deal with them.
damageman, I believe it was nobody but yourself made it harder for you to be respected and trusted. I suggest you clean up your vocabulary first.
Damageman, wonder why there weren’t many Japanese in the cell with our narrator? Maybe the racist culture of Japan has different rules for themselves. Maybe they let nationals off for stuff that they railroad someone of a different ethnicity for. Any just maybe by buying into their line you are contributing to the poor treatment the writer of this diary is getting. I think the term is Uncle Tom.
Hold on people… no need for this to turn into a commentary on rascism.
My use of “The Chinaman” was made with no rascist intention. I am just sharing with you and the Stippy guys some of the diary notes I made while locked away.
I liked the Chinese gentleman I shared my space with. I helped him with his Su-doku problems and he helped me with my kanji. He was a nice guy. As are all the other Chinese people I know through my work and life in Japan.
The use of the name was tongue in cheek, much the same as calling Noisy “Noisy”. As I never got to know my Chinese cellmates name, he became “The Chinaman”, a bit like in a gangster film or whatever.
No harm intended and certainly no need for comments like that of “Dangerman”.
Speaking of different ethnicities and different crimes- I know a guy who is building a house in Shibuya, up around Shoto, the really nice area. Apparently its popular for rich foriegners to live there, and thus (?) the usual Japanese crims do not target it. However, because its not targetted by the Japanese gangs, it has been a popular area among the Chinese gangs! Seems to be very segmented. Just like the prison does.
Blue- can the writer shed any light on this?
were all gaijin here. you can call him chinaman and he can call you white/black guy. i live in japan and have read and heard about japanese prisons. the real ones scare the crap out of me almost as much as the police and the legal system.
japan and korea are a lot closer to china than most westerners think.
Anyone interested in Japanese legal procedure should check out the new movie from Suo Masayuki, “Soredemo boku wa yattenai,” which tells one young Japanese guy’s story. He’s falsely accused of groping a schoolgirl, and naively believes that if he tells the truth in court, he’ll be acquitted. Wrong! Now showing around Tokyo:
http://www.seekjapan.jp/movie_page.php?id=1235
Go with a Japanese friend - many people are simply unaware of how the system works.
For advice on what to do if you fall foul of the law:
http://www.debito.org/whattodoif.html
George has a buddy in India it seems:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5116332.stm
Hey Captain. Funny you should mention that. I was just thinking of going to see that film this weekend. I had heard about it from a lawyer friend who strongly recommends it. Interestingly he said that the cinema was almost completely empty (and he went on opening day). I guess when you think about it, it’s not the kinda movie that you can take your g/f to on a date, is it…
The official (nihongo) homepage is at soreboku.jp.
Has anyone seen it yet? Captain, can I take my missus to it?
Ken said:
Ken, the problem with the word Chinaman is your own, and not the author’s. There’s nothing any more racist about the word “Chinaman” than “Frenchman”, “Irishman”, or “Englishman” unless you have some sort of racist idea that Chinese are inferior. No offense, but sometimes N. Americans are so uptight and PC it’s ridiculous. Come to Taiwan (or mainland China) sometime and see Chinese people for yourself instead of telling us all what’s offensive. Don’t be so turtle hair.
Wow, looks like we got a story on http://www.boingboing.net that had lead a few people here to read this article. Hello to everyone from Boingboing! We will keep this page updated with info about Japan that you may not hear on mainstream media sources, so please come back again if you are a Japanophile, or just like an interesting read from the far east!
To Wei: well said. Actually, when I was publishing this article, the word chinaman did not ring the racism bell in my head at all. Can anyone actually explain why Chinaman is racist anyway? Please fill us in. I suppose it is like the word “gaijin” actually. Some people think it is a racist word for foreigner, and some people don’t mind it at all. (Don’t you call foreigners “aliens” in the US??? That sounds a tad more racist and demeaning to me!)
It all depends on how these words are said, and in what context they are used. Someone can say gaijin nicely, and really not have any trace of racism in the message they are trying to give. Some can say it with an edge, and really mean to be racially intolerant. I suspect it is the same case for Chinaman. It’s all in how its said, and I know “George” was not saying this in the bad way, so forget about it, and get back on topic! Doesn’t anyone else have an experience in a Japanese prison that they can share with us???
Japan’s police officers have something like a 95% percent conviction rate. (i went there and had a friend there in law school). Do you really think that 95% of the people picked up for everything actually did something wrong? Hell no. The Japanese’s ability to hold a subject for over twenty days without even bothering to charge them is part of this.
The Japanese feel that if you are in jail or in front of judge than you must have done something wrong, otherwise you wouldn’t be here in the first place. I’ve heard it’s possible to get a case overturned but it’s extremly difficult and on par with a miracle.
I think it’s well written and worth reading. The author admitted he did something wrong at the beginning (thought probably not something deserving of 21 days). So far George has owned up to his own actions, and though he’s expressed frustration with the system (rightfully IMO), and one of the individuals, he hasn’t lashed out at all of Japan, like a lot of people would in his situation.
That’s more of the kind of attitude we need. This all Japanese/all Gaijin/All Whatever mentality is nothing but useless self-propagating hatred that helps no one.
I can’t wait for Part 3, George.
I don’t think it’s rude to call someone a “foreigner” if you say “老外”, or “外國人”.
Wei, you know as well as I do, it’s all in the tone, if someone calls you ‘laowai’ or ‘waiguoren’.
3 years in China, and being able to speak and read Mandarin/ Hanzi, can back up my statement…
In America “Chinaman” is certainly offensive. Why? Why is “nigger” offensive when it is just a contraction of “negro”, also now often considered offensive, which is simply Spanish for “black”? There are no real rational reasons, simply the history of the way these words are used, and who uses them. “Chinaman” in the US is usually used in a condescending way and to most Chinese-Americans brings back images of Charlie Chan or buck-toothed coollies saying “me so solly.” I suspect it is offensive because “Chinaman” is a pidgin translation of “Zhong guo ren”, but it is not good English (that would be “Chineseman” on the model of “Irishman”, “Englishman”, etc. No one says “Irelandman.”) So saying Chinaman is probably also perceived as mocking early Chinese immigrants whose command of English was less than perfect.
“Nigger” comes from the French “nègre”, which probably comes from Spanish or Portugeuse “negro” - it’s always had an association with the slave trade, and is perjorative - usually one says “noir” or very often in France “black”.
I always comment to my friends that I want to go to Japan for vacation. I have a joke that I make with them that I need to save 10,000USD for bail because knowing how I am with women and alcohol I will land my self in jail. Now reading all of this…HMMmMm I might need 20,000USD but in all honesty good read and I am sympathetic to your situation and do not wish this type of thing on anyone… cant wait for part 3
Very nice article, one of my old neighbors was an American who did 2 years in Prison in Japan, so this story is sort of familiar, I just wondered how large the cells felt to “George”.
Interesting read.
Kent, Vanya and Anon. why don’t you all go hi-jack another blog with your ‘ikijibiki’ (生き字引) bull shit. Go bore someone at Wikipedia or stay in your local library. Even George himself made a statement up there above you that he is not being rascist, so why don’t you stick to the subject? Same for damageman, you dick.
The whole point to this story is that George seems like a fairly normal guy making sense of his unfamiliar surrounds. We all have big stress living in Japan and have all had some sort of rascist anti-Gaijin scenario that made us angry, but unfortunately for this turkey, he was drunk and ‘lost’ it. he even turned himself in (which begs the question).
23 days? Doesn’t sound like much but no thank you. What if you just stayed went to work that day?
Great story and a nice window on the Japanese legal system. You write well, so it was a good read. Thanks for posting! One thing that made me slightly uncomfortable, though, was that you seem to have used the real names of the other inmates in your cell. Granted, it is very unlikely that anyone would ever identify one of these people based on a blog post in English, but with the first guy, you have given his age, place of origin, name, and a physical description, so I guess there is an off chance that someone could put them together.
Again, it’s probably not going to be a problem, but unless these guys have given you permission to use their names on the internet, I think it wouldn’t hurt to withhold or change their names (assuming you haven’t already).
…..
On a side note, maybe you should do a google search in Japanese. It seems you made an impression, and it could be that someone has posted about you!!
I have to say, it sucks that George did what he did. I mean, the drunken altercation doesn’t help the imagine of westerners in Japan. But, who hasn’t gotten drunk and did something they regret? I think it’s great George went to the police station. I probably wouldn’t have done the same thing. I think George was pretty freakin’ tough for going through this. And his employer (if not self employed) for sticking by him.
Roger: Thanks for the comment, yes, I forgot to mention that the Japanese guys names have been altered to keep their anonymity too. The only things that have been altered are all the names, and the name of the police station where George first went.
Interesting reading. The story, and the comments…
I am an European, living in the US by choice, and it really puzzles me how sometimes people here tend to be “very” sensitive over what happens in other places of the world and seemingly totally blind to what they have at home. In no other civilized country that I know of the police is as rude and violent as it is in hte US, bar none. Don’t have to believe me, just take a look at any news or at serials like Cops. Probably American’t are used to it, but it just jump at my eyes. We can start from the (in)famous Rodney King episode and on and on…
Just to be clear I haven’t had any question or problem whatsoever, ever (maybe because I’m caucasian and acceptably tall??…) but I do have friends (coincidence, not caucasian…) who have had pretty unconfortable experiences.
So, in this case we have a guy who acted like a jerk, no matter what. He has been submitted to the rules of the country he has decided to live in, which for what I read are not really worst that what he could have got at home. We can surely discuss if 23 days without any hearing or accusation can be considered “civil rule” (I think it’s not) but this is just a quirk in the local legislation. And all in all a pretty bland one, I’m sure it would have cost him much more here at home. Want to talk about quirks of the law in the US? …
Don’t get me wrong. I love this country from a lot of point of view. But please, American friends, step down from the soap box and realize that the world is large and there are other culture around
My Japanese Cellmate Is A Nintendo Crook…
Ever wonder what life is in a Japanese prison? No? Me neither! But Japan site Stippy has been posting a series about a foreigner named “George” (not his real name, folks!) who spent a stretch on the inside in a……
In regard to Homeless Man’s comment, the conviction rate in Japan is actually almost 99% (compared to 89% in the US). Japan has passed legislation that will introduce jury trials in 2009 (currently, verdicts are rendered by individual judges, whose “…decisions related to the facts of a case normally defer to the prosecutor’s wide-ranging and often unchecked powers of investigation”). See this Christian Science Monitor article from a couple years ago: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0604/p06s02-woap.html
I remember when I had to do a research about the japanese legal system when I was a ryugakusei over there… God, amazingly if they just see your skin color and there is a crime they can jail you up and make your life miserable (Sending to hell the vienna convention)….
Anyway, poor gaijins really, specially those from developing countries, I look like a peruvian so the police stopped me several times to check if everything was “in order” it’s amazing that when they saw my real nationality they apologized and let me go at the same instant… it’s sad…
Japanese police just generally seem to be dumb. Anyone else noticed this? Police in my country have to have an IQ of more than 80 to pass the police academy, but here they are just thick, and even when you speak perfect Japanese, they still don’t seem to get it, and just make up their own story anyway, totally disregarding what you say to them. That is my experience anyway.
I lost my bike here once, and the cop at the Koban said, “You didn’t lock it did you?”. I said, “Yes, I certainly did”.
He just kept trying to convince me that I didn’t lock my bike, and was a real jerk. Wtf is their problem?
Then again, the cops in the USA were jerks too. Maybe it’s just my country that has smart people…. Yes, that could be the case. Anyway, its hard being surrounded by idiots.
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I know this is a lot of text to post as a comment, but the article which I read on the Economist just now is too appropriate here to not be quoted in full. The article (found here) was written to highlight a new film, called “I just didn’t do it” that highlights one Japanese mans experience of being wrongly accused of molesting a high school girl. I haven’t seen it yet, but sure plan to. Here is the article anyway:
Title: Confess and be done with it
I just wanted to comment on Nevadan’s comment:
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I am an European, living in the US by choice, and it really puzzles me how sometimes people here tend to be “very” sensitive over what happens in other places of the world and seemingly totally blind to what they have at home. In no other civilized country that I know of the police is as rude and violent as it is in hte US, bar none. Don’t have to believe me, just take a look at any news or at serials like Cops. Probably American’t are used to it, but it just jump at my eyes. We can start from the (in)famous Rodney King episode and on and on…
Don’t get me wrong. I love this country from a lot of point of view. But please, American friends, step down from the soap box and realize that the world is large and there are other culture around
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I don’t disagree with you about American police but I don’t think that you should assume that everyone posting here is American. In fact, some of the people reading or posting here, like me, might be living in Japan and so this would be very relevent to them.
For me, this is not a(n) ‘other place of the world’.
Why do you assume everyone posting here is American? Why do you assume that they are blind to American injustices?
I wouldn’t go to a site that listed injustices happening in America and tell the people to stop complaining because there are injustices happening in Japan(or other countries for that matter).
But, I do agree with you about American society.
Just wanted to say that.
A tosser gaijin in Japan
To Behan
You are right, I should have been more precise. I totally agree that if something is wrong, everywhere, we all as “human being” are more than entitled to point it out and possibly to do something to right it.
This principle is sometimes difficult to put in practice (difference in society and history make the borderlines difficult to distinguish…), and this is where we can and should confront our points of view. What I was trying to say is that it’s not very useful to assume by default that “we” are superior than the “other”, and this is unfortunately an attitude I often find here in the US. Some of the comments seem to reflect that kind of attitude, and this is what I wanted to point out. Reading the mails I was referring to it seems that they indeed are written by Americans, but of course I have no way to know if that’s true, so I stand corrected.
This is garbage. Sounds like this author is a real apologist not only for his own criminal actions, but for everyone else’s he met there too. “He was really nice..” Do you think criminals are all raving bloodthirsty lunatics 24-7? You fucked up, you deserve what happened to you. Next time maybe you won’t be so stupid.
Funboy, there are a lot of people in this world that seem really nice, but deserve to be locked up, and there are a lot of people who are locked up who’s crimes are far more trivial than those “really nice” people. Don’t tell someone that he’s f*cked up unless your shit doesn’t stink, and, if you still insist on the f*cked up thing, at least use correct English grammar, and then people may listen to what you have to say, rather than writing you off as an uneducated tomboy from a red-state.
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Are the terms Englishman, Scottsman, Welshman, Irishman Norseman, etc. also offensive? If so you’re all a bit too PC.
[...] Part 2, he describes going to the police station the day after the incident to apologize and pay [...]
Trevor: “you fucked up” is correct grammar, idiot. It’s akin to saying “you messed up, you screwed up”, along those lines. For example “Trevor, you fucked up. My post was gramatically correct, but you were too full of your own self-righteousness to notice.”
Maybe you should learn to read properly before posting replies to people criticizing their English, as not to make yourself look like an even bigger fool.
William,
“Chinaman” = “Englandman” or “Irelandman”. I.e. it sounds silly. Amazing how people can’t tell an adjective from a noun. And really PC is not the point here. It doesn’t bother me if you say Chinaman, my father-in-law says it all the time. But Chinese-Americans WILL be offended by that term, and most Americans will think you are kind of odd or old fashioned. You have every right to say what you want and god bless you, but just be aware that people will judge you by the way you speak.
Vanya baby, you are boring people again. - marv
Vanya: “You have every right to say what you want and god bless you, but just be aware that people will judge you by the way you speak.”
Is judging someone by the way that they speak somehow less offensive than judging someone by how they look?
If someone wants to judge me without bothering to know me then so be it. But I put them in the same boat as someone who judges me purely on my race/sex/religion, and I have very little time for them.
P.S - sorry trev - funboy’s grammar wasn’t fucked up
speak french audio…
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