gh14tq5@yahoo.com wrote:

> Since I've been in Japan, I've become extremely lazy about exercising.
> So, I've been thinking of taking up jogging.  I know foreigners are
> suppose to carry their foreign registration card at all times, but when
> jogging there just really isn't anywhere to put it.  Any foreigners in
> this newsgroup jog in Japan.  If so, what do you do about your card?
> I've thought about just leaving it home since I've never been asked for
> it before, but I figure that would just be asking for trouble.

It _may_ depend on where you live, but out here on the Tokyo-Kawasaki 
border the only things I ever carry are my house key and 2kg carrying 
weights.  If you ever do get stopped and your torokusho becomes an 
issue, the cops will take you home to get your ID and, if your SO is a 
Wajin they'll just ask her to vouch for her gaigin house pet and warn 
her about letting you out without a collar.

The practice _has_ caused some strange incidents, but never with the 
authorities -- like the time I found a naked woman who had been bound 
hand and foot with electrical wire and then strangled in the graveyard I 
cut through to get to the public park's running track.  Persuading a 
temple priest to give his prayers a rest for five minutes and let me 
call the cops from inside the temple was one of the more strange events 
I have ever experienced at six in the morning.  The cops asked for my 
name and address and never asked me for ID.  They just wanted to know 
when I found her, if I'd touched her, which footprints and fingerprints 
might have been mine and where did I get the training to know she was 
dead and know about how long since she'd been murdered before I called 
it in.

Of course, I don't recommend murdering a 25-year-old OL just so you can 
find her and get on the good side of the cops ...