“Koban” (交番) are police-boxes. There are many in Japan, and they are all pretty uniformly distributed, there are around 1.000 only in Tokyo. The purpose of this system is to have some police presence in many places, so people would feel safe. Koban are little and are easy to recognize because they usually have peculiar shapes.
I like koban because they always have an area map and a bored policeman who would help you to find your way if you are lost or you are looking for some specific place. The koban system is also used in Singapur and Brasil, countries that were helped/advised by the Japanese government.
Koban
One of the curiosities about koban is that many of them are empty and open at night!. You can free to go inside, look around an you can even use a telephone just in case you want to call the police! You can call the police from a police-box, isn’t it surrealistic?
Empy koban.
Table inside a Koban.
Computer inside the previous koban.
