Japan is known as one of the safest countries in the world.
The country was ranked as third in the most peaceful country in the world according to the fourth annual Global Peace Index (GPI) back in 2010 and as of the last GPI in 2017, Japan had dropped to #10, tied with Ireland. With Iceland, New Zealand, Portugual, Austria and Denmark in the top 5 for 2017.
I’m often asked by travelers about going to Japan and how safe I feel and I can easily say that I can walk by myself at night, my tablet hanging out without fear of being robbed or leave my backpack and go to the bathroom and come back and not worry about anything being taken.
Have I seen anything bad, like brawls or anything troubling? Yes, I have but not by Japanese but by non-Japanese, who were typically drunk. And of course, the worst you see are on the news, but nothing like what we are exposed to on a daily basis in the U.S. In fact, there are times when I watch the news in Japan and there is no major crime featured, if anything, what you see are crime that takes place overseas.
But that doesn’t mean that Japan goes day-by-day without crime, because frankly, humans are not perfect and there are those who are always against the status quo. Crime does happen daily in Japan
And one can see what kind of crime transpires in Japan through the website Gaccom Safety Navi.
According to the website:
Safety Navi provides easy-to-understand public safety information (about where cases occur and what kind of suspicious-looking person appears) using maps, avatars, icons, or graphs, for public safety and security. We analyze and classify the information about incidents provided by the police or a local government, and offer them for free.
So, looking at the image above, the most surprising are in pink. You will see some right near train stations, so I wonder if those are “chikan”, the perverts who touch women in trains.
And you see a few gray, that means someone created some type of fraud and green indicating suspicious activity.
And now let’s take a look at Ikebukuro and Otsuka and what’s even more surprising are the light blue marks.
There are some shady areas and numerous reports of theft and purse snatchings and also areas where purse snatchings and theft have been reported.
So, the map is a good indication of trouble areas, as some areas have clusters of activity.
This is good for travelers to know, especially if you are considering to stay at a place via AirBNB or getting a hotel in such areas, I see Gaccom Safety Navi as being a useful site for researching locations to stay and visit.
Granted, one shouldn’t worry about crime while traveling in Japan but like any other country or even your hometown/city, you always want to be alert about your surroundings. Every city/town has its bad areas and Gaccom Safety Navi does a good job of showing clusters of trouble spots in the various wards of Tokyo.
