As crime dries up, Japan’s police hunt for things to do (2017)

Similar with bringing a bottle of a brand that the store sells into the store - how are they supposed to know if you brought it in or if you just took it in the store and opened it there on the way to the cash register? (which, by the way, is not super uncommon either and generally tolerated)

German police are not allowed to collect fines on the spot, it's a corruption prevention measure.

How many more police would it take, I wonder, before London was considered as safe as Tokyo?

I really love how you condensed it well. This is how I always observed in the wild.

Doesn't seem like the best argument, because that isn't necessarily how the rule of law works. Taking abandon property isn't necessarily theft, even using a non-abandoned bike isn't necessarily theft but something like "unlawful usage", and if you don't intend to keep the object it is even less theft. It many countries it isn't a "minor crime" to leaving an abandoned bike with the police, but simply what you are supposed to do. But apparently Tokyo has a big problem with abandoned bikes [0]. You sentiment mostly just seems to confirm OPs suggestion that people should know their place.

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00444/tackling-tokyo%E...

Most difference between crime in Norway and Japan is more likely down to Norway having much larger immigrant population from poorer countries.

I think your attitude easily ends up excusing police states. Japanese justice system is highly questionable. Almost nobody ever gets acquitted in the justice system, and prison is rather harsh. Norway gets away with low crime despite (or because of) probably the worlds most liberal prison system.

Don't get me wrong. I admire a lot about Japan, but I think you easily fall into the trap of thinking that everything great about Japan is directly the result of something bad.

I would argue more important factor causing law crime in Japan is much the same as in Nordic countries. Low levels of inequality. How people are socialized. Stricter gun laws.

And let us not forget that the average age is high in Japan. Older people commit a lot less crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#Criticis...

Multiple detectives investigating a bicycle theft is absurd. This has positively nothing to do with the broken window theory, but instead is exactly what the article talks about which is an overstaffed police force with little to do.

And it doesn't have little to do because Japan is such a cultural gem. It has little to do because Japan is facing a population implosion as the population ages with few children. Youth and young adults are, unsurprisingly, responsible for most crime, and when you have few in that demographic crime drops. No surprise.

[1] It's interesting to think about this in the context of a Japanese person in, say, Canada. They meet with a ridiculous scenario with a ridiculous response, and when vocalizing to a coworker how ridiculous it is they are told that they are a smug foreigner and need to shut the hell up. That would be simply outrageous, and is the sort of thing the worst sort of racist would resort to.

I get your sentiment though. As a foreigner, tying to live here and have normal, fulfilling relationships takes a metric ton of work. In my experience, there's a bit of an endowment effect, where the coping mechanisms and language successes we pick up through the years get tied into our personal identities.

I've certainly gotten my jimmies ruffled by Outrageous Gaijin TM on many occasions, but I feel like there's a lot of room for mutual growth and 切磋琢磨ing through those interactions.

To flip things on their head a bit, mutual understanding and cooperation are held as socially high ideals here. I think most Japanese would agree those are better than dropping harsh judgement.

Anyway, if you just made a careless post after a stressful day or something, then let me buy you a beer (or tea, if you prefer). My email is in my profile.

The normal thing to do in this case would have been to wheel it to the local kōban...

In what city did you interact with police?

It's like an athlete in combat sports not hiding the fact that they are gassed. There has to be some attempt to guise the reality or the situation devolves even faster.

I said that at the risk of being accused of having internalized racism as an Asian person, but the situation on the ground really does resemble what he said.

1. Was it a crime the suspect was unlikely or unwilling to commit otherwise? (The "subjective" test.)

2. Did the actions of officers cause a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime? (The "objective" test.)

In other words, entrapment is when the police actively cause somebody to commit a crime they wouldn't have otherwise committed in similar circumstances.

In the article, the police just left a case of beer inside a car. The police created a passive opportunity, but that's not enough for entrapment... the act of steeling that beer was entirely self meditated.

The stereotypes about boots buying Dodge Chargers, Mustangs, Camaros and such on 21% interest rates are very real.

source: personal experience, former civilian military contractor

Compare that to a situation I just saw on a major highway. One state trooper driving exactly the speed limit in the passing lane. For at least 20 miles, he kept a dozen cars at a safe speed. Not to mention preventing any other unsafe driving. Sure, it only lasted 20 minutes from my point of view, but if he just drove around for a few hours in plain sight, that's a lot of cars driving safely. Sadly, it doesn't generate revenue.

What a world. What a world.

And in the US, parents would face criminal charges for things Japanese parents routinely do, like sending their kids to the store alone. Unfortunately the US is filled with plusungood sexcriminals (citation needed) and weapons (price of freedom) so we can’t do it in the land of freedom.

Now in Indiana, supposedly one is supposed to be allowed out with parental permission, but I don't know if it is like this in the rest of the country or if places have re-written their juvenile curfew laws to account for this sort of thing.

In addition, folks on house arrest or parole often have curfews as well.

  ...sale or use of prohibited substances.
  ...prostitution.
  ...homeless campsites.
  ...public intoxication or underage drinking.
  ...pretentious indie filmmaking.
  ...spray-paint tagging.
  ...logging.
  ...poaching.
  ...dumping.
  ...lewd behavior.

I had this conversation in a park with another dog owner just last night. The park has two spaces - a developed area where dogs are required to be on a leash, and an undeveloped area with trails through tall grass where dogs are allowed to be off-leash as long as they are responsive to their owners.

He was sitting on a bench on the developed trail, with his dog on the ground next to him, with no leash. No surprise, his dog lunged at mine as we walked by, and he couldn't comprehend why I was upset that he didn't have a leash handy for his dog. It's incredibly frustrating that folk can be so selfish and short-sighted.

RIP Patrice O'Neal.

Just because someone is subjected to violence from someone who shares some group characteristics doesn't mean it's not worth investigating or that he or she is somehow responsible for this violence.

A similar logic could be applied to black men on black men violence, to cite other answer that you got.

To push it further I what stops us from using the same reasoning to say that it's not worth investigating domestic violence in the case of same-race couple? In the end it's just whites hurting whites.

You may think that but it's far from universal, including in the tech industry. [ADDED: The US does rank fairly low on average on the amount of vacation people take but Japan is as low or lower.]

This is less true for the newer generation, especially since they don't have full time jobs in the first place.

Just walk into any Japanese business or local government office and the giant stacks of documents and rows of office ladies will make any knowledge-worker have an aneurism at the obvious inefficiencies. But very little (outside of the car industry, maybe) is about being efficient. It's about being "stable". Not that I agree with this at all, it's just my cynical take based on the interactions I've had.