けいさつに会った！
So, I had my first encounter with the けいさつ (police) here last night. Corey and I were leaving a store and unlocking our bikes to head back to our apartments, when these two guys walked up to us. One guy said…
“すみません、日本語は大丈夫ですか。”
(Excuse me, is Japanese ok?)
So we said yes. Then he just went off in crazy Japanese that neither of us understood. We stood there all confused when all the sudden the other guy busts out his badge and goes “けいさつです！” (We’re the police!) We had no idea what we did wrong. Then the other guy asked us why our names weren’t written on the bikes, where did they come from, etc. We had to explain to him that we were exchange students and the bikes were the schools, not ours. I think they got scared of us since they saw we were foreigners and had no idea what was going on, so they just said ok and left.
Apparently there are issues with bikes being stolen so they wanted to see if they were really ours and we weren’t just stealing them. I think theres a stereotype about foreigners just coming over here to steal stuff I guess. It was quite an interesting experience though…
