I was referring to Japan. Police will very easily stop you [0], the more you diverge from what they expect to see at that time and place, the higher your chances will be to have a chat with them.
As you point out, it's also not heavy and tensed confrontation as it could be in other countries. You won't get shot at a wrong move, officers are polite, they're not there to piss you, don't specially expect you to be in the wrong and really would prefer to get it done and go on with their watch.
That's where keeping credible papers on you makes it a painless 30s interaction and not a long and awkward drag to the station that nobody wants.
> The rest of the world doesn’t allocate much resources to the police
Japan police has a decent HR budget to keep officers around in the communities. Which is a truely good thing, police becomes very integrated to the daily life of the people there, while fully expecting to have nothing to do all day long outside of helping elderlies cross the street and dealing with kids getting lost.
[0] At least I got stopped a decent amount, and that is a pretty shared sentiment I heard a lot. The only exceptions were daily suit people and women.
