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When you buy a car in Japan, you have to provide proof that you have a parking space available to you. This is because there are virtually no places you can legally park a car without paying a monthly fee, and most of those spaces are full.

There is no such requirement when you buy a motorcycle, because anywhere you look, on the sidewalk, on the edge of the road, next to traffic lights, in front of closed shops, there are motorcycles and scooters parked everywhere, blanketing Tokyo and most everywhere else I have been in this country.

This is because, clearly, parking in these areas inconveniences no one, especially when the sidewalks are generally wide enough for several people to walk abreast, even if a motorcycle is parked.

The one exception to this is near the entrance to a subway or train station, where so many people descend with their *bicycles* that even parking a bicycle there for 8 hours will probably result in a warning sticker, and two days will almost certainly get you a ticket.

Given all that I have said, once a month EVERY month since I bought a motorcycle, I have received a single parking ticket around the beginning or end of the month. Every time has been when I was parked in a place where several other bikes had been parked the entire month, with not a single warning or ticket posted the entire time. Clearly this seemed to me to be the police just meeting some kind of arbitrary and avaricious quota to fill their coffers, since no one was complaining.

This all changed this month, as we are experiencing a city wide “Campaign” by the police to put the screws on the population, with myself and several people I know seeing dramatically increased police presence throughout the city. I have seen a breathalyzer roadblock on the major street between Harajuku and Omotesando at 1am on a friday night, two teams of police randomly searching people walking through a popular street in Shibuya, also at night. I have even seen teams of parking police fanning out to ticket people.

This hit and run approach to policing does not provide actual safety. It simply provides the false impression of police power, while providing extra income for the local police. The incentives here are all wrong. What is the point of a police force, if not to protect the population? When the budget of the police force is linked to how many people the police harrass, I don’t see how this will ever change.

In voicing my frustration aloud, someone suggested that if I feel that way, then I should live in another country that has a legal system that I agree with.  In the long run, maybe this is true, but more than likely I will just give up and sell my bike, rather than change the rest of my life just to be able to enjoy a hobby.