“Remember, don’t talk to the hostesses, and don’t start a fight. Got it?” I asked my friends, making sure everyone also had a drink in hand.
Girls holding signs, where sometimes a man may come in to “persuade” you to try it
“What happens if we lose you?” one of my friends asked.
“Look, you’re not carrying shrooms or weed. Don’t start a fight, and worst case they put you in a cell until you sober up. Then call me.” I grinned back. The Neon lights with the words “Kabuki-cho” illuminated behind me. Farther ahead, many girls with signs.
Sorta like this now
They all nodded, some coming from downtown LA, some former military members, and some just like you, traveling Japan for the first time.
As a preamble, they wanted me to take them to the sketchiest part of Tokyo, which I find to be a contradiction.
After seeing a beer cans and some trash on the floor, I looked back at my group, shaking my head. “I’m so sorry guys. This area is not as clean as Japan, and it can get pretty bad.” Then I looked back up and winked at them.
The reason why it’s so safe is because of the culture.
People in Japan from a younger age are taught to think of the community first, and not themselves. There are pros and cons of this, which I’ll reserve for another post, but it starts from school as the students are expected to clean everything. If you do a bad job, you will be socially ostracized until you put in “your part”. Everywhere you go it’s pretty much handicap friendly, so if you have any disabilities people make sure you can go about your day.
The reason why it’s so safe is because there’s no incentive
It didn’t used to be this way. Japan has organized crime like any other country (Yakuza ring a bell?) but even they realized it wasn’t profitable to do violence so they pretty much resort to financial racketeering or money laundering and other “services”, but never violence.
The reason why it’s so safe is because of the police culture.
Japan has what some in the West would be almost a too trusting culture with the police. Kid is lost? Go to the local police station. Harassed? Local police station. Followed? Local police station. You get the idea.
You also don’t really have to worry about being injured going to the police. The police are liable if they do physically hurt you, so they have come up with ways to restain you without harming you.
The reason why it’s so safe is because the population is older and busy
If you look at Japan, the average age is almost 50. People don’t need to prove themselves when they’re older, and have it stable. Likewise, the younger generation are almost too busy with school, work, or other societal aspect that there’s almost no free time to do anything else. This obviously has major cons, but it does make it so that most people follow the rules and are rewarded on the “successful” pathway.
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