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I had been wondering whether it was just Tokyo being more cosmopolitan but I'm now wondering if the reason for less adversarial encounters is simply that I have
by patio11 9y ago
I had been wondering whether it was just Tokyo being more cosmopolitan but I'm now wondering if the reason for less adversarial encounters is simply that I haven't purchased a bike since leaving Ogaki.
(If this sounds dumbfounding to folks with less context: bicycle theft is near the top of police priorities and they have the impression that foreigners are the primary cause of it. "Suspicion of stealing my own bicycle" has historically been the most common thing which attracted me adversarial attention.)
- fenomas 9y agoI had the same feeling. Personally I've only been stopped by police once (randomly, to show the gaijin card) in 15+ years, and similar is true of most of my friends. But I've occasionally met people who talked about getting stopped a lot, and they've all been people who biked in the city.
- kalleboo 9y agoCertainly to a degree it depends on the police district - here I've only been stopped once and they were stopping everyone randomly due to some incident nearby. I initially gave them my residence card but they didn't know what to do with it and were a lot happier to see my driver's license. My bike wasn't even anti-theft-registered (which is required here as anywhere else) but they didn't seem to care and just noted the frame number without a comment.