Law and Order

In spite of the Japanese obsession with rules, law and order, they are not above stealing bikes. About a month after Matt and I bought bikes, we were at the hospital near home (I use the term 'hospital' lightly - we were informed that they had no 'specialists' to treat throat infections which are apparently very difficult to diagnose in this country) and when we left to go to another clinic, my bike was gone. My shitty little Y8000 'mamachari' (aka, 'mama chariot') was apparently hot goods on the street...

I got it back a couple of weeks later, believe it or not. You gotta love a country where things get stolen and the police actually find them for you.

When I went to retrieve my bike from the lock-up they took us into this little room and shoved a mountain of paperwork at me to read and stamp. An idiosyncrasy of officialdom here is that signatures as we understand them, don?ft exist. Everyone has their individual stamp, called a "hanko" that they use to sign off documents with.

So, being very obviously Japanese, with a very Japanese name, I read through the Japanese, nodding and hmmming knowledgably. When Matt explained that I didn't have a hanko (I didn't want to show off my advanced language skills), they looked momentarily confused, before producing a red ink pad and got me to thumbprint my whorls onto about 20 different places.

Eternally stamped for the next time I break the law...