Police in Japan

Okay, so let's see what I found about police in Japan.

I'm going to show you some pictures related to police in Japan.

The picture that consists of car mixed white and black color is the most common police car in Japan. As I said, the car is only for police. No one can bring their own cars as police car in Japan. 

Compared to Honolulu Police, I think police car in Hawaii is cooler. Although, it's hard to see the inside of the car in the picture, there is actually no cage for a suspect. But, once policer officer arrest someone, at least one police officer must sit next to the person to monitor him.

The picture that consists of car with only black color is called Hukumen in Japanese, which is unmarked police car. I often see it on freeway in Japan. Although you may identify it as unmarked police car in Japan, once you get used to it, I think you will be able to identify which car is actually unmarked police car.  The model of the unmarked police car is limited, so it's easy to see it.

You see the big building in one of the pictures? It's not picture with a man standing in front of small building. I'll talk about it later.

I think you can see what I mentioned. The big building is Metropolitan Police Department, which is headquarter of all police department in Tokyo. Compared to Honolulu police, it looks like a condominium, doesn't it?? 

Now, look at the last picture with a man standing in front of a small building. That's what I really want to talk about. This is what I called as police station in previous entry. This is called Koban in Japanese. Koban doesn't exist in the U.S., so there is no English name. For foreigners, it's called Koban Police. It's also called police box, but I totally don't understand the name. 

Koban is like a guardhouse. It is located in many places so that if something happens, police officers can go there easily. As I said, unlike the U.S., using a bike is common because of small street in Japan. In Koban, more or less, there are always a few police officer. Once something like accident happens, you can go there and explain what's going on, then they will see where it happens.

In my local town in Japan, there are 3 small Koban. The distance between them is about 3 or 4 kilo meters. That's only data from my home town, but you can easily imagine how many police stations are.

I've never seen someone arresting by police officer in Hawaii, so I can't tell, but police officer in the U.S. usually takes a gun to a suspect quickly. This doesn't often happen in Japan. Police officers in Japan of course, can bring guns, but type of guns is also different from the U.S.. Usually, police officer in Japan have a revolver that has 5 ammo. Unlike Japan, police officers in the U.S. have a gun that has around 12 ammo. That is difference. I think this means they need such gun because of gun society. Unlike the U.S., Japan is not gun society, so such gun that officers in the U.S. have is not needed in Japan

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Once the officer in Japan uses a gun, it will be big news on TV, and it doesn't matter whether it's better or not.

These are differences between Hawaii and Japan. Because difference of system of police, this topic is more like to be about differences between the U.S. and Japan, but at least, you can see what police officer in Japan looks like. 

This is the last entry, so I chose police. How's it? I hope you enjoy reading this entry.

HIRO