We were driving down a country road with literally no houses in sight, only tall grass and outskirts of rice farms, when a policeman jumps out in front of the car ahead of me, wearing a white reflective vest, blowing a whistle and waving his scrawny old-man arms. He waved the car ahead of me onto a side street that was hidden entirely by long grass. At first I thought just the guy in front of me was going to get pulled over, but the police officer continued to wave his bony arms at me and the two cars behind me, directing us to the same side street.

As I pulled onto the side street, I saw a big police van a few feet ahead of the first car to be pulled in of which a couple more police officers came shuffling out the side door. One approached me, and asked for my license. I showed him my international license, and his face dropped. I knew from that moment that I was in for another cultural roller coaster of being screwed. He then asked for my gaijin (foreigner) card. So I whipped that out and gave it to him. His face drooped even further and asked me to get out of the car. I did so, and he took me into the big police van where he showed me the radar of how fast I was going, 19km/hr over the limit (about 12mph). He then turned to confer with his superior officer about the legitimacy of my documents.

Then they sat me down at a table in the van while one of the officers filled out all the paperwork. I signed a few dotted lines and was given my ticket: 15,000 yen, almost 150usd. When I got my one speeding warning at age 16, I was doing 45 in a 25mph zone, the officer then took pity on me because it was my first offense, was late for work, and was very respectful the entire time. In this instance, the “late for work” part could have been substitued with having to put up with slightly offensive raised suspicion based on me being a foreigner, the time that they kept me detained (a little over 2 hours), and/or the insignificance of the offense being only 12 mph over on a very country road. But no, of course they didn’t give me a break.

So I have to pay this ticket, but fortunately, unlike in America, I don’t have to make the inconvenient trip to the police headquarters to do so. I can just go to any bank or post office and pay it there.