Anyway, this is how the story started: On Sunday, March 13 I went over to see my friend Crystal Meth and Garnet, who was in Japan for the weekend. Meth lives over in west Tokyo at KICHIJOJI, and we had already spent most of the weekend running amok and drinking and dare I say it, even smoking the odd canful of hash smoke. I had already had a big weekend and was very tired, so I wasn't really in the mood for another late night. But you know, the guys insisited I go out! Actually the real reason I decided to go out on that soon to be fateful and almost fatal Sunday night, was that I wanted to see Garnet's old girlfriend Miho, who was also in attendance. I was starting to think I might have a chance with her. We went to a restaurant near Crystal Meth's house, and while we were there, Meth called another one of our friends, a Kiwi called Dennis (Dennis the Menace, aka Maniac High), who happens to be a porn actor in Japan!

Menace and Cristal Meth hijinking just before our holiday in hell

Menace said: "Why didn't you come over to Shimokitazawa, we could go play pool and have a few drinks." So we decided to go to Shimokitzawa, about 25 minutes away by train. I wasn't really that keen and I didn't have any money, but Garnet and Meth insisted: "You have to come -- we will pay for you."

All weekend I had noticed Garnet had been acting strangely. He had tried trashing a karaoke shop on Friday night, and then on Sunday night he got in trouble again, by deliberately dropping a plate of food on this Japanese girl we were talking to at a restaurant in Shimokitazawa. She started crying and then all her Japanese friends got up from the table and walked out of the restaurant in disgust. One of her male friends slapped me in the chest and said: "This is unacceptable behaviour" or something like that. (This version of events has been disputed: for Garnet Mae's testimony, click here CORRECTION .)

All kind of bizarre stuff to happen when you drunk and stoned and sleepdeprived, and I couldn't quite work out why they were so upset. It was also pretty embarrassing for me especially since I had been getting on so with them, I was even hoping they would introduce me to the Tokyo reggae scene since they were all into reggae. On the way out the crying girl said "Arigatou!" to me on account of all the tissues I had handed her. So I guess she didn't hate me even though all the others did. Throwing food all over a girl is not my idea of style and I can't understand why Garnet would do such a thing -- but I guess by choosing to associate with a ruffian, I am a ruffian too (that is how the police later viewed the incident.)

Anyway, we were walking the streets for an hour or two, and then Garnet said: "Let's go to a karaoke box to sing a few songs." He said something like we should try and avoid paying the bill for it, but I just thought he was joking. So we went inside the karaoke box, it was about 4am on a Monday morning (my Dad's birthday, how could I forget that?) I was so tired at this stage (after moving house and 3 days of nearly no sleep) that I wasn't really aware what was happening. At least, that's what I told the cops! We were there about an hour, drinking and singing silly songs, and then suddenly Garnet and Cristal started running out the door saying: "Come on, let's run for it!" Or words to that effect. I moved to the front door and saw Garnet and Cris running down the street. I looked back and saw one of the karaoke staff launching into pursuit -- one of them pushed a button and a siren started sounding (I think this was also to alert the police.) So I was standing at the door with no money in my pocket, and Garnet said: "Come on, be a man for once in your life. Run!" And I started to run. That was my big mistake because I might not have been in prison so long if I had have stayed inside the karaoke box.

Suffice to say, the karaoke staff were a lot faster at running than me. I only got about 200 meters. Or maybe 500 metres, or a kilometer... I probably could further than I thought. But I am no runner, and I am no fighter either. Within 3 or 4 minutes the police were there putting the cuffs on me. They took me to the Kitazawa Police Station where I was to stay for the next 2 weeks. The police also arrested Menace, the New Zealander.

Menace the TV and porn star on Japanese TV in 2006

One of the first things the police asked me, on my maiden day of questioning at Kitazawa Police Station on May 14, was "have you ever taken any illegal drugs?" I replied no automatically, and the police didn't pursue the matter any further -- but had they bothered to do a simple blood test, I would have been cactus. The truth of the matter is, Menace and I had been smoking hash fairly brazenly on the long night before our hard arrest, and I was in fact stoned when they raced me by squad car, sirens blazing, to the imposing five-storey edifice of the police station. I was stoned and drunk and giddy as the police led me, cuffed, through the long and bustling corridors, past a room where some kind of crowd control simulation was taking place -- I could hear women screaming, cops shouting: "Stay back! stay back!" Bizarre stuff, especially when you are off your head, and I said to the policeman who was escorting me: "Omoshiroi!" ("It's interesting!") Taking me for a smartass, the policeman replied: "Omoshirokunai yo!" ("It's not interesting at all!") He misread me -- I wasn't being a smartass, I was genuinely interested, and felt like a tourist observing my own arrest (or an undercover reporter.) I was, however, stoned, and if the cops had known that, my fate would have been grim indeed. If Menace had still been carrying his lump of hash when we were nabbed, we both would have been in trouble. We had been smoking all night, in the toilets at a Shimokitazawa billiards hall, out on the streets with a bunch of Nepali parasites. Miraculously, Menace had run out of hash by the time we were caught. Or maybe it simply wasn't our destiny to get stung with drug possession charges in Japan.

On the first day there I was convinced they were going to question me and then let me go, but it didn't work out that way. They said they were going to charge me with fraud, which is a serious offence, so they slapped some pretty severe prohibitions on me (no visitors, no phone calls, and Menace and I weren't allowed to talk to each other.) The first time they took me up the cells one of the scariest looking prison wardens I have ever seen looked me up and down and said: "Take off your clothes." I kept thinking: This must be a dream, I can't believe this is happening. It is a nightmare. They took me to a cell, which I had to share with a few other people (Japanese and Chinese prisoners for the most part.) Still, I thought they would let me go the next day.

Of course they didn't let me go, and I had to stay there a total of 16 days before letting me go. According to the law, the police in Japan can detain someone up to 23 days without laying charges, so I guess I am lucky they let me go after 16 days. And if they charged me, I would have had to spend another 6 weeks in there waiting for a court appearance. (They said I could pay bail to get out of prison, but bail would be set at $15,000.) I was thinking: if I do get charged I will spend the 6 weeks in prison, and then go back to Australia to live when I got out. I think I probably would have lost my job at Telephone English if I was charged and had a criminal record, and this job was the only reason I wanted to continue living in Japan.

Read the complete Prison Japan chronicles:
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PRISON JAPAN... PRISON PLANET.
Contact the author Rob Sullivan at coderot@gmail.com. All comments will be published at the bottom of this page. Anticopyright October 2007.

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