Quote Originally Posted by BlogD
Wow. I have noticed that police behavior is specific to certain areas--in Tachikawa I was never stopped, for example, while in Koganei, just a few stations down the Chuo, I got stopped constantly.

Sounds like you have a bad area.
Well, my area is near Nihombashi (I was checked once just at the crossing of Chuo-dori and Eitai-dori near Nihombashi bridge). This is an area with lots of foreign business people. The largest building in the area is the American Merrill Lynch Building just at the crossing I mentioned. IBM and other foreign companies also have buildings in the area, so it's only obvious that there are lots of Westerners around (giving good jobs to thousands of Japanese). Several apartments blocks near where I have been checked are for (highly paid) expats, so I don't understand why the police care so much about checking them there, when a bicycle must cost less than their shirt or neckties. Why not checking if they haven't stolen their brand clothes, watch and bag then ? They just want to cause trouble to foreigners so that they can write how obnoxious and petty the Japanese police is (do you see another purpose ?).