The Japanese Police Love Us

After picking up our car from Toyota Rent-A-Car, we decided to grab a bite to eat before driving to Hiroshima. Our car had a built-in GPS navigation unit, so finding a place was relatively easy. Out of all the restaurants displayed on the screen, we chose one unique location: McDonalds. Yes, we had a craving for some greasy American food.

At the time of the order, we each picked what we wanted to eat by pointing to a visual menu on the conter. Thundergod and Hinjew had a double quarter pounder while Fallout had a Big Mac. The lady at the counter then said something along the lines of “seto” or “syeto” while just looking at us. Puzzled, we all looked at each other, hoping one of us would understand what the women meant. She kept mentioning it, “seto? seto? see-ye-to?”.

We just nodded, “Yeah, ok!”

Luckily for us, the meal was perfectly fine and did not lack anything or have anything extra added. However, we kind of wish we knew what she was saying.

Once done, we headed back to our car and played with the GPS. We were trying to figure out how to switch the language from Japanese to English, and we later found out through some Google searches that it is impossible. Our car’s GPS only functions in Japanese, which is just great.

Ten minutes later, a police car appears out of nowhere, and we are now surrounded by 3 cops. They peak their heads in our windows and ask us for our passports and driver’s licenses. At this point, we’re kind of freaking out.

A few minutes later, they pull Thundergod out of the car, as he was the current driver. They put him in the back of the police cruiser. At this point, Hinjew and Fallout freak out even more.

Now, a police officer approaches Fallout and asks him to open the trunk. Without hesitation, he opens the trunk and the police now asks whether they can search the luggage that has been stored there. Since Fallout is in a foreign country without any rights, he can’t really say no now, can he?

Fortunately, this whole incident soon came to an end when our papers were cleared. We were now ready to go to our destination, if we could just figure out how to operate the Japanese GPS unit.

“Excuse me officers, could you help us program our GPS?”

We gave them our destination address: the Rigah Royal Hotel of Hiroshima. They happily helped us out and minutes later, we were literarily waving goodbye to the police.