Gross indeed, and in my newbie naivete, I was quick to denounce Mark as the ugly American who could and would never understand the deep nuances of Japanese culture. How naive I was, how wrong I have turned out to be! Mark was right -- Japan was a trap, a sinkhole for gaijin who could have gone on to brighter things, had they stayed in their own country.

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. 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.

I have got a new girlfriend down in Vietnam and I aim to see her a lot this year, up to 5 times if I can swing it. Since I live in Japan and Air China is pretty much the cheapest carrier between Tokyo and Ho Chi Minh, I expect to rack up plenty of air miles in the Chinese skies this year and beyond (and if I am smart I will monetise them before carbon taxes start kicking in.) Given that Air China offers the cheapest routes, I expect to become a frequent flyer in the lead up to the Olympics, and hopefully an old hand by the end of the decade. I expect I will get to know Beijing's Capital Airport very well as this relationship develops. I have always wanted to visit China, and today I made my first acquaintances. It was a grim and gray day as I headed east to Tokyo's Narita Airport, to board my Air China flight. Just before we took off, however, the sun came out, and for the first ever time I was treated to an urban flyover of Tokyo's familar sprawl, in weather clear enough to see it. Tokyo opened up like a circuit board in the midwinter shine, intersected by countless tsunami proofed rivers and their floodplains. Following the course of the rivers with my eyes to see if I could recognise them, memories surged into my mind (via a fairly convoluted path of free association) of my days hanging out with Maniac High in the summer, how I kissed that girl in the pool at Yomiuri Land. But me and Maniac High had parted ways, and in a way, it felt this flyover closed the page on that chapter of my life. A new era had come, and its epicenter was in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

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 (Dad's birthday.) 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. We were there about an hour, and then suddenly Garnet and Crystal started running out the door saying: "Come on, let's run for it!" I moved to the front door and saw Garnet and Crys running down the street. I looked back and I saw the karaoke staff starting to run after us -- 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. 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.

Dynamic Drive - Coding Forums - Active-X.com - MENU