Racial Profiling

Last Friday, on my way to karate, I stopped by to pick up another teacher. We met in a little side parking lot next to a department store. He jumps in, and as I'm about to pull away, two guys wearing kariyushi (think aloha) shirts come up next to my window. Thinking they are Mormons or something, I tell them I'm in a hurry and start to pull away. Then they flash me their badges.

"We want to see your driver's license and registration."

In my mind, I'm already guilty and about to be deported. As I'm looking for my stuff, they tell me that my license number is suspicious, and they want to make sure the car is mine. I begin to wonder if I transferred the vehicle information under my name correctly, or if that the previous owner's boyfriend (who was Okinawan) might have been some kind of criminal. 

As they are going through my documents, they start up a casual conversation of "Where do you live?", "Oh, you're a teacher.", etc. I didn't have the dread of talking to these cops as I would talking to a cop in America. Probably only because in this situation I knew I wouldn't be paying a $120 ticket. 

To give a quick summary of Japanese license plates, plates here have a Japanese character on them, such as a ま or a た, followed by a few numbers. Since there is a military presence here, military plates have a roman Y on them instead. (The running gag being "Y are you here?")

After writing down everything they wanted, they say they were suspicious of the car because if has a Japanese license plate and I'm not Japanese. They were just making sure the car belonged to me.

Where's Jesse Jackson when I need him?