So remember how I said that the BOE takes Super Good Care of it's Assistant Language Teachers? Well, apparently about 4 years ago, the girl who was teaching here thought she was being stalked. Whether or not this is true is still largely debated. To make a long story short, my house is under constant video surveillance - Alkatraz style. And there's a black box that I could (in theory, if not yet in practice) use to pull up this video surveillance and monitor my house. Crazy.
So safety is a huge issue, here and in Japan in general. My house is about a 1 minute walk to the main government office, which houses the Board of Education, the tax office, the alien registration office, the water-bill paying office and a number of other things that are municipal in nature. At all times, there is always someone in this office. This means that at night, people take turns staying overnight, sleeping in the office. In my house there is a small remote with one red button on it. If I were to push this button aｔ, say, 3am, someone wearing very little clothing (in the summer) would rush over with a flashlight asking what's the matter. This actually happened to my predecessor, so now I know NOT to push the little red button. Unless, of course, I need it.
All of this is incredibly unnecessary when you consider the virtually non-existent crime rate in Japan. Of course, one should not go wandering through dark alleys alone at night in order to test this theory (especially if one is a female gaijin, or foreigner). Why, you may ask? Maybe because if you get caught from doing anything from stealing a pack of peanuts to breaking someone's nose to smoking a joint, the police have a right to hold you in jail for up to 35 days. During the first 1-2 weeks, they can and probably will interrogate you for 9 hours EVERY DAY. 90% of convictions in Japan are the result of a confession. And the police here have NOTHING to do. So if they think you're acting suspicious, especially in smaller towns and villages and super-especially if you're a foreigner, they will follow you, ask about you, etc. The end result of all of this is, of course, a very low crime rate.
In short: In Japan, the law enforcers are far scarier than the law breakers.
Haha, so true about the Japanese criminal system. It's really pretty horrifying, especially for foreigners. I like to think that the low crime rate is just due to the way Japanese people think (they don't like taking stupid risks), but you're probably more right. On the flip side though, Japanese police officers are /extremely/ helpful, since most of them just sit in their Koban (police box) all day waiting for people to come ask them how to get to point A or stuff like that.
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