Archive for September, 2009

Foreigner feigns ignorance of Japanese to avoid speeding ticket

A clip from yesterday’s “Real Time News” in which a police officer in Kanagawa prefecture stops a Mercedes Benz that was traveling at 128 km/h (80mph), 58 km/h over the speed limit:

The driver of the car is a foreigner, and when the Japanese police officer starts speaking to her in Japanese, she pretends she can’t understand and speaks English. The officer cannot speak English and isn’t quite sure what to do. If he were to give up and wave off the foreigner without a ticket, his action would be caught on film and he would no doubt end up like the Tokyo police officer who resigned in shame recently for failing to enforce the law in a similar circumstance.

The officer continues to speak in Japanese to the woman. Eventually he notices that she seems to understand what he is saying, so he suggests that she can actually understand Japanese. She finally caves and and admits she can speak “a little” Japanese. He then informs her of that driving 128 km/h in a 70 km/h zone is a grave speeding offense that will result in a suspension of her license. The woman is shocked, so shocked that she suddenly develops the ability to speak enough Japanese to make the accusation that, “this country doesn’t treat gaijin like humans.” The officer says he is not treating her in such a way.

She starts to cry and say (in Japanese) that she will kill herself. The officer calms her down, tells her to drive carefully, and sends the woman away with a ticket. The woman will have a chance to dispute the ticket in court. Hopefully the judge will have a chance to see the video footage of the incident and get a look at how she tried to weasel her way out of taking responsibility for her violation of the law.

I don’t believe this woman’s action to be an isolated incident. I’ve met quite a few foreigners who swear by the “I don’t speak Japanese” method of avoiding traffic tickets, and anecdotal evidence across the internet seems to support the claim that this kind of thing is very common. When police officers are not on camera, many prefer to let foreigners off without a ticket instead of going through the hassle of dealing with the language barrier.

Note: This is just a short clip from a segment that included several other lawbreakers, all of whom were Japanese. Its primary focus was not on foreign criminals.

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Japanese mask family

As autumn approaches, the swine flu is expected to spread. This protective mask company is now running commercials on Japanese TV that show how wonderful it is to have masks for the whole family:

As happy as the people in the commercial appear, I find the idea of entire families wearing masks to be pretty depressing.

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At home with the Hatoyamas

Back in July, FTV had a chance to visit Yukio Hatoyama and his wife Miyuki and observe their morning routine. Here’s a video clip of them eating breakfast together and fixing Yukio’s hair:

Miyuki prepares some okonomiyaki for breakfast. It is usually a lunch or dinner food, but she believes that it is good for breakfast because it contains a healthy amount of vegetables. After the meal, Yukio dons rubber gloves and washes the dishes! His wife supervises him. Apparently dish washing is a part of his daily routine.

Miyuki is in charge of coordinating her husband’s clothing and managing his unwieldy hair. After breakfast, we are shown a scene of her combing his hair into place and then declaring him to be “cool” when she finishes. It is said that her positive attitude is a great boost to Yukio.

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Related video clip: Al Jazeera, like the rest of the international media, has had trouble finding anything interesting to report about Yukio Hatoyama, so they’ve focused on his weird wife instead:

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Yukina Kinoshita meets a handsome American

Talento/Model Yukina Kinoshita makes a confession to the press about the foreigner who appeared in her new commercial for Meiji chocolate:

She says that the above-pictured American man was incredibly handsome. When their eyes met, she almost felt like she was in love and the feeling made her nervous during the commercial shoot. However, it seems the commercial ended before she could confess her feelings.

Here is the full commercial, for your enjoyment:

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Foreign criminals use slight of hand to rob Japanese stores

Mainichi reports on a series of crimes hitting Kansai:

The foreign thieves follow a set modus operandi, asking shop clerks to show them a number of 10,000-yen notes, returning most but pocketing some of the bills with sleight of hand. In Osaka Prefecture, there were 14 such cases between Aug. 21 and Sept. 1, with the thieves stealing around 1.1 million yen.

According to police, one such heist took place in Osaka city’s Naniwa Ward, where two foreign-looking men in their 30s entered a hardware store and requested to see 10,000-yen bills with serial numbers beginning with SS. The men looked over a number of notes and quickly returned them. It was only later that the shop clerk noticed that 40,000 yen had gone missing.

In a similar case in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, a man entered a drug store on Sept. 2 to buy some sweets. At the cash register, he asked to see the 10,000-yen notes in the register. When the shop clerk opened the register the man grabbed a handful of 10,000-yen bills. The clerk demanded he return the money, and the man did so. Later, however, it was discovered that the day’s receipts were 120,000 yen short.

It is quite bizarre that the store clerks granted the requests and allowed the men to inspect the cash.

Update: Here is a clip from TBS’ “The News” in which there is a reenactment of the store clerk handing a pile of cash to the foreigner:

Unlike the previous clip that contained the vague description of “foreign looking” criminals, this one states that they appeared to be from East Asia. In the most recent thefts, which took place in Fukuoka, the criminals used broken English and gestures to ask for an “SS collection” of 10,000 yen bills. The shop clerk, believing them to be foreign tourists who wanted to collect Japanese money, politely handed over money for their inspection. As in the other cases, it was only hours later that he realized the foreigner had secretly collected some extra money.

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Visiting research vessel saved Japan from sinking

Until Thursday the 9th, the US scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution (JR) is docked up at Yokohama daikoku warf (大黒埠頭). Via some nifty CG effects, this ship made a cameo appearance in the not particularly good, 2006 remake of Nippon Chinbotsu. In the original, Japan sank. However, In the remake, thanks to the wise spending decisions of Monka-sho, Japan is saved from a watery demise by the JR and her sister ship, the Chikyu.

Scene from Nippon Chinbotsu in which the JR has just completed a hole.

Actually, that is not quite correct; these ships simply drilled the holes into which a daring (and fully clothed) Kusanagi-kun detonated explosives while piloting the Wadatsumi 2000 submersible (another excellent national expenditure) well below its rated depth (due to top-notch engineering).

But in reality, this is the first time that these two ships have been in the same vicinity. The JR arrived on Friday after completing a climate change expedition to the Bearing Sea, hours before the Chikyu departed to continue earthquake research in the Nankai Trough off the coast of the Kii Peninsula.

These two ships are the primary platforms of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, which is headquartered in Sapporo and jointly lead by Japan and the US.

[Update: Thanks to John Beck of Texas AM University for this great photo of the ship!]

The JR is essentially a floating city at sea that operated continuously (24/7/365) in a scientific capacity, except for mandatory dry dock inspection every 5 years, from 1984 to 2003. She has just undergone a 3-year retrofit and recently returned to service. In total, the JR has traversed nearly 400 thousand nautical miles on scientific expeditions.

Unfortunately, it is too late to take a tour of the ship, but if you are in the area, it might be interesting to stop by and have a look. The Yokohama Bay Bridge Skywalk (Japanese only) offers great views of the ship and Yokohama harbor.

Access by bus to Skywalk (skywalk-mae bus stop):
From Yokohama station, take city bus 109.
From Tsurumi station, take city bus 17.
Entrance fee: ¥600

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Contributor Bio: Steve has been splitting time between the US and Japan for the past 10 years or so and is now a post doctorate fellow at a large, lumbering University in Tokyo, where he gets paid to play with dirt.

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