Wandering the town yesterday afternoon, I happened to see a little altercation between Kanagawa's Finest, and a rude old lady.
The scene began with a police car pulling up in front of an illegally parked car. They sat there for a minute or so, then as one, the two constables stepped out of their car, walked up to the little green Daihatsu, where one slapped an infringement notice to the windscreen and the other took a photograph. (I presume this was for official records, not as a holiday snap).
Duty performed, they sit back in their car and wait for the traffic lights to change before they drive away.
Cue a lady in a housewife's uniform (why do ALL housewives in Japan wear aprons all day?) toddling out of the shop, climb into her car, begin to pull away from the kerb and then notice the infringement notice. She reaches out the window to try and brush it away - to no avail. They are adhesive, and this one's firmly stuck to the glass.
She gets out to look, and finally realizes what it is, and why it is somehow relevant that there is a police car with flashing lights right in front of her. Taking the notice in hand, she marches up to the police car, taps on the window, and demands they take the notice back, because she was in fact in the Glasses Supermarket at the time. (This is evidently, in her book, enough of a reason.)
The mistake the police made was getting out of the vehicle to talk to her. Had they stayed put, they could have simply driven off without taking over twenty minutes to explain that she had broken the law.
Firstly, she claimed that it was not right that she had been issued a ticket, because she had only intended to be in the shop for a minute, that it wasn't her fault that paying for something actually took longer, and she was in the shop for four minutes.
The police point out that this is irrelevant.
Second, she claimed that she had to park on the street near the no parking sign, because there was nowhere else to park the car.
The police point out the huge carpark directly across the road.
She refutes this, saying that carparks cost money. (They do, here.)
The police point out the traffic fine.
She now changes her story, apparently she was only in the shop for one minute.
The police point out that not only were they in attendance for much longer than that before she showed up, that she had initially claimed to have been in the shop for four minutes.
She now decides to inform them that she simply will not pay the fine, and what will they do about that now, hmm?
This goes in circles for about twenty minutes, while I eat my custard cream doughnut and drink my coffee.
Finally she demands to talk to their superiors. The constables are only too happy to provide directions to the main police station, where she is free to dispute the charge with superior officers, but that she will be told the same thing. She jumps in her car, in a huff, and informs them that she will indeed be speaking to their superiors, and drives off into the night, without her headlights on.
The police make a note of that, too, and leave.
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