Japanese parking police

[Bdog]

Taken from a personal email. Sorry its long.

Ever wondered what the police force would be like if the society was relatively crime-free?
Last night myself and two other f*uckedgaijin went for a quiet curry (wives all out of town) in Meguro, a suburb of Tokyo.
We parked just like we always do, down a side street (like everyone else).
About 10 pm we get back to the car and there's a knock on the window -- it's a Japanese cop on a bicycle.
"No Pucking!" OK mate, sorry about that (we're parked in a line of about 15 other cars).
He gestures and rattles on, and we derive that he wants us to get out of the car (it's pouring rain too, by the way).
So out we get. "Penarty! Pass-o-port-o!"
I explain to him in my limited Japanese that people don't routinely carry their passport to dinner!
"Porice Box!" He wants us to go down to the police station. Not a chance mate, just write the ticket and let us get home.
I have a 6 am start tomorrow and I need some sleep. By now about 15 minutes has passed, amidst a lot of ooohing and ahhhing,
and several other parking offenders (all Japanese, funnily enough) are driving off unnoticed by this mental giant of a cop we are talking to.
I should have known it wouldn't be painless when you see a 50-odd-year-old guy doing parking duties on a bicycle at 10 pm -- fair to say he wasn't a crack squad candidate.
So he calls in back-up. Yes ladies and gentlemen, back-up. A murder? A hostage situation? Major drug bust? No, these gai-jins (foreigners) have parked for 85 minutes in a 1-hour zone!
So along come 2 more cops, in a car, lights flashing. By this stage one of my friends is not amused, the other guy is in shock (in between trying to get his secretary to talk to this typical Japanese bureaucrat of a law-enforcement agent), and I'm in hysterics. Where's my video camera, I'm thinking. This would make the other Funniest Home Video entries look pretty mundane.
The reinforcements are actually pretty cool, and (like us) can see the joke this has become.
However, if they contradict this idiot's decision, he loses face, and would most likely go home and poke a long sword into
his abdomen due to the shame of a superior officer telling him he's being a complete prat.
So they go along with it, ask us to go down to the cop-shop, we say look just write us a ticket and we'll be on our way.
Meanwhile, the knucklehead cop is gesticulating hand-cuffing. Yeah mate whack 'em on and we'll trundle into the local police station in shackles, in your dreams.
Another 2 cops arrive on the scene (I suspect they were just bored and needed some entertainment), along with a detective (mesh flack-jacket and all). The detective speaks a bit of English, and was a pretty reasonable chap. I tell him how crazy this is, he privately concurs but says to just appease the guy. We just want to go home!
The scene of 6 cops and 3 gai-jins in an alcove out of the rain discussing a parking ticket seems almost surreal!
Finally (we're an hour into this ordeal now) it is agreed that this moron can just write us a ticket for 15,000 yen and we can pay the fine at any post office or Japanese bank branch. Hooray! We should be outa here in a few minutes.... Wrong!
The driver has an International Licence. A lot of ooohhing and ahhhhing now.
Which part is the licence number? etc
The filling out of the form took about 15 minutes. Thank God, let's get outa here.
No, there is another form. He takes 5 minutes to fill that out, but alas! he makes an error.
New form, a duplicate of the first one, but a different colour (possibly to alert the media he made a mistake on the original).
Then comes the icing on the cake, out comes the chop (a red ink stamp of his name in Japanese used here much like a signature).
Once, twice, oh and put one over there just to make it reeeeallly official.
So there you have it, on average about an hour's time for 6 cops, 85 minutes of our time, for a total revenue figure of 15000Y
Next time you read something about Japanese economic reform, remember this story!
Amazing how the world's most inefficient work-force can make such reliable cars and TV's eh?!

[kamome]

I think that male metermaid on a bicycle quaifies as one of Japan's "useless people": those guys who are given crappy jobs just to keep the unemployment rate low and maintain society's inefficient ways.

[gaijinzilla]

A few years ago we got our car towed away from a perfectly legal parking zone, while about 100 meters away in a NO Parking zone two cars remained untouched. When we went to get the car back, we pointed out that we were LEGALLY parked (we'd done so before & there were traffic signs posted stating it was okay to park on that street) The dickhead at the centre said that yeah he knew that but they needed one more car to make their daily quota and ours was the first one they saw What about the two cars parked illegally...they saw them BUT our car was closer then he told us to go to the police station and pay the fine, before we could pick up the car. When we paid the fine, we even told this to the police but they said "YOU PAY, YOU PAY" (rather rudely I might add) to me, while it was my wife who was paying (the car's in her name) and she was the one who got points deducted from her license
I'll get my revenge...one of these years, I don't know when or how but I'll get my revenge Cue the diabolical laughter and maniacal organ music

[Bdog]

HAHA yes I know how you feel. I like all Japanese - bar the police. I think the police have a definite system of discrimination against foreignors.

[tokyojoe]

The meter maid system here is so stupid. Rather than just do it all the time they send people out on specific days. They tag a certain car and then wait a while to see if they can ticket it with some ridiculous fine. And yes, they have a quota to keep.

[kamome]

A few years ago we got our car towed away from a perfectly legal parking zone, while about 100 meters away in a NO Parking zone two cars remained untouched. When we went to get the car back, we pointed out that we were LEGALLY parked (we'd done so before & there were traffic signs posted stating it was okay to park on that street)

I'm just blown away by this. It's sheer unfairness and insanity. You were legally parked, and they still towed you? There had to have been a way to appeal that, maybe through the kuyakusho/shiyakusho?

[gaijinzilla]

Nope...no way to appeal. We found out later on that this is a regular occurrance in that area of the city. Unless it happens to some local big-wig, the song will remain the same. If one ventures to the police station where we ended up paying the fine, one can plainly see on all the side streets surrounding the cop-shop a plethora of NO PARKING strategically placed behind all the cars parked there--that don't get ticketed or towed. Moral of the story: take the bus when you want to go downtown! (we used to be able to park for free near the Ken-cho building, but the bastards put a lock on the gate. Why oh why do I pay my taxes for?!?!?!?!