People here are basically honest. There aren't any turnstiles on the transit system --- they just assume you'll have bought a ticket. Children roam the streets on their own and think nothing of talking to random adults.

Of course, they back up this trust with enforcement; there are occasional spot checks on the transit system with big fines; and if you don't pay a driving ticket the police will come to your house and remove your license plates...

Now I guess someone would call a bomb disposal team and cut the traffic 3 blocks around it. (and I would have been very sad, because to this day I still love that bag, leather, light, durable, practical, it still fits a modern 13" laptop perfectly)

Anyhow, this thread is all anecdotes.

That's true. And crime statistics aren't much more useful because willingness to report and how well the police handle filing differ a lot between cultures.

The crime statistics themselves are very useful, there's no need to chuck them about because some level of crime goes unreported. Statisticians have long ago realised that we can measure this too.

All the apartments have thick security doors[1], lower windows of buildings have iron bars and all gardens have tall fences. If you leave anything that looks even remotely valuable in your car, someone will break a window and grab it. There is tonnes of vandalism, and even if you leave a motorbike locked with a secure lock it's somewhat likely it won't be there the next day.

It sounds the complete opposite of Japan!

[1] A few weeks after I arrived I was at a friends house and there was a disturbance of some sort in the apartment next door. The police couldn't get in, so called the fire service who had to work for 20 minutes to break the door down. They considered going in through the outside, but it was the third floor and all the windows had metal shutters.