A week or so ago while my dad was visiting, we were stopped by the police. This is not an unusual occurrence. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that it happens quite regularly. The difference this time was that instead of being treated courteously and professionally, we were treated like second-class citizens right off the bat and for no other reason than walking down the street. I’ve been stopped two times around Nagoya Station and at least six times around Sango previous to this encounter. While I find these encounters to be annoying and insulting, I often grin and bear it as the officers are usually polite, and I can justify it by telling myself that they are just doing their jobs. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I can understand why they are doing it and as long as I am treated respectfully, I can deal with it for the time being. This is what happened:

We had just come back from a delicious meal at Akbar, the Indian restaurant near Nagoya Station, and a visit to the top of the Toyota Building to see the night view. We were in good spirits, and after getting off the train we stopped by the bicycle parking area to pick up our bikes. I’m still not sure whether the officer was lying in wait, or just happened to see us as he was riding by on his motorcycle, but either way, he just kind of appeared out of nowhere. It was a little jarring because we were in mid-conversation when he stopped us. He asked Nami, `Hey, are you Chinese or Korean? Show me your Alien Registration Card. ` She replied in a tone that was less-than-polite, `I’m Japanese so I don’t have one. ` Then he turned to me and pointed, `Who is this? ` to which she replied, `He’s my husband.` He looked at me and asked, `Do you have a visa? `, like it wasn’t obvious enough as I was still in a suit and on top of that Nami had just said that we were married. He then asked for my Alien Registration Card, and I pulled it out to show to him. He said, `Oh, you’re a teacher.` with a kind of snide tone. I told him, `Yes, I’m a middle school teacher.` He acted incredulous and said, `What? You’re a Chinese teacher??!` (In his defense, middle school is Chugaku in Japanese, and Chugoku is China, so it would be somewhat easy to mishear, but you would hope common sense would let you know that I’m not a Chinese teacher.) I corrected him, and he said, `Oh, you’re one of those ALTs.` I nodded. He then said, `Well, I guess I don’t have to check your bike registration since you’re a teacher. I guess you’re OK,` like he’s doing me some kind of favor. He continued, `We have to be careful around here, because a lot of foreigners live in Sango. ` I was thinking to myself, `What does that have anything to do with anything? As if foreigners are the root of all evil in Japan. ` Luckily, he didn’t check my dad’s passport, because he didn’t have it on him at the time and that could have caused us some temporary trouble. If this situation had come from an older cop, maybe I would have understood a bit more (although, I still would have been just as pissed off), but the cop was relatively young, maybe in his late 20s or early 30s. I was wondering if perhaps he was new and therefore didn’t know the codes of conduct, but even so, he was completely out of line. I thought about filing a complaint, and Nami’s mom thought I should go over there, find out who he is, and report him in front of his commanding officers. But in the end, I decided against any action, because I figured it probably wouldn’t do any good, and it could cause me more grief than anything. Next time though, I won’t hesitate to ask for his badge number before I show him my ARC. We’ll see how he likes that.

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