If you are just a visiting foreigner, you’d probably need to mess with them in a serious way.

I don’t claim to be any expert on it, but I did live in a yakuza neighorhood for a year and had a few miscellaneous encounters with them over the following few years. Most of the time when I’d see them, they were usually hustling it to get somewhere or involved in some activity.

But I will share two funny yakuza stories.

Crime is very low in Japan, but some things do get stolen. One of those some things are bikes.

One night, after having some drinks with an Australian friend, I walked him back to his bike, which he had locked up to a tree. Right next to it was a rather large car, with two low level yakuza guys sitting in the front seats. My friend goes to unlock his bike and…finds a lock pick jammed into the lock.

So, being who he was after drinking too much, he starts swearing, gesturing, raging against the world. Sort of like the Tasmanian Devil. He spots the two yakuza in the car, and he starts yelling at them. After a moment, they get out of the car – and I am thinking he and I are going to have to mix it up with these two guys.

But then ———- they fixed his bike lock! So we shook hands, and said a few kindly words. I am pretty sure they knew who I was because I lived in the area.

A few years later, I was on a JAL flight on a domestic flight and, for some reason, they seated me right next to a guy who was clearly ‘mid rank’ or higher yakuza. It was strange because the flight was only about 1/3 full. He was much better dressed than the low level guys I used to encounter.

He seemed sort of nervous though. After a while, he asked the flight attendant if she’d move him to a different seat, because he was afraid that he’d be forced to speak English with the foreigner.