When you’re a kid, every bit of information you hear on the schoolyard is considered unquestionable and undisputable fact. Way back when I was (slightly less) naive and impressionable, the things that I heard about from my friends and classmates about Japan never failed to awe me, such as: the women are all sex-crazed goddesses with a penchant for housework and the culinary arts; the men are all geniuses and don’t need to do any physical labor because they’ve created highly advanced robots to do it for them; and there is absolutely no crime because police officers are all bad-ass martial arts experts who lay down the law by dispensing justice indiscriminately and without mercy.

Now, while the first example turned out to be true (and how!), the same unfortunately cannot be said for the other two. While automation might be slightly more advanced here compared to the West, the mental superiority hypothesis quickly died the moment I first heard a Japanese person espouse the oddly ubiquitous assertion that Japan is the only country in the world that has four distinct seasons. As for the Japanese keisatsu (police force). . . well, let’s just say that they’re not quite the ruthless, uncompromising badasses that I had envisioned in my youth. In fact, in reality, Japanese police officers seem more adept at sitting in the koban (police box) sipping tea and occasionally giving directions than at fighting crime and catching bad guys.

Take, for example, an incident that occurred earlier this week when Tokyo police arrived at a scene in which vehicle had slammed into a building in the Daiba waterfront district. When the police approached the vehicle, the driver emerged brandishing a metal club, at which point the officers reacted like little girls and promptly ran away as fast as they could (!). The police finally managed to capture the assailant when he tried to flee in a police vehicle, the keys of which had been left in the ignition.

The incident caused quite a stir in the media after the prime minister himself commented that it was “embarrassing” and called for increased training for the national police. Of course, had the episode taken place in the US, the driver would have likely been shot the moment he charged in the officers’ direction.

Anyway, video of the incident is available here and is definitely worth a look for comic value.

Of course, this recent incident is only one in an endless series of embarrassing and criminal acts perpetrated by Japan’s finest. From drunkenly assaulting shop employees to taking photos up schoolgirls’ skirts to forcing women to touch their naughty bits, these men in blue have firmly secured their position as the laughingstock of the world’s police forces. Way to go, guys!