People working busy lives in big busy cities often complain about HOW FAST times seems to fly these days.
My cousin Kellie says this shit all the time. For the person sitting in a prison cell or detention center, however, time is a tedium. The blank boredom of four
bare walls. The blank immensity of time, every moment gutted and stretched out, into a blank future without shape or definite conclusion. Of all the subtle tortures
perfected by the Prison Establishment, boredom is the most brutal. But, I have got to look on the positive side:
At least I am not getting beaten by the guards. I am not sharing the toilet with cockroaches. And I will probably be getting out of here in a couple of weeks, maybe
even in a few days:
And since I can't drink any alcohol inside, and I am in fact drinking nothing but water, I am definitely giving my liver a rest. I am also definitely losing weight,
thanks to the PRISON FOOD.
POST NOTE: It is amazing to reflect on the coincidences which happen in life, the chains of events which cover the causal plane like spider webs...
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 Menace, who happens to be a porn actor in Japan! 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. It was 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 (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.
MONDAY, MAY 14, 2007 ---- A Perfect Storm.
Anyway, this is how the story started: On Sunday, March 13 I went over to see my friend Cristal 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 Cristal Meth's house, and while we were there, Meth called another one of our friends, a Kiwi called Maniac High, who happens to be a porn actor in Japan! Maniac High 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..." Thus, the fatal storm was set in motion.
For the full story of my inglorius arrest in Tokyo, click here.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, 2007 ---- The
Tedium of Time.
People working busy lives in big busy cities often complain about HOW FAST times seems to fly these days.
My cousin Kellie says this shit all the time. For the person sitting in a prison cell or detention center, however, time is a tedium. The blank boredom of four
bare walls. The blank immensity of time, every moment gutted and stretched out, into a blank future without shape or definite conclusion. Of all the subtle tortures
perfected by the Prison Establishment, boredom is the most brutal. But, I have got to look on the positive side:
At least I am not getting beaten by the guards. I am not sharing the toilet with cockroaches. And I will probably be getting out of here in a couple of weeks, maybe
even in a few days:
And since I can't drink any alcohol inside, and I am in fact drinking nothing but water, I am definitely giving my liver a rest. I am also definitely losing weight,
thanks to the PRISON FOOD.
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2007 ---- Live the Keyword.
THE FIVE YEAR CYCLE -- Sitting on the floor of my cell at Kitazawa Police Station and reading The Da Vinci Code, it reminds me of sitting on the floor at WinBe in Kisarazu in mid 2002, reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. (It also reminds me of Steven King's prison break novella Hope Springs Eternal, which I was reading at much the same time.) Back then I felt like I was a prisoner, under suspicion from those I worked for. Now I literally AM a prisoner, and guards watch me all the time. This is another example of a FIVE YEAR CYCLE at work in my life. How will this particular cycle end? Only time will tell.
One problem every prisoner must learn to cope with is that of loneliness. If you are a western prisoner in an ASIAN JAIL, compound the loneliness factor by a factor of about 10. But let's assume you know the local language or some of the locals can speak English, in the end there will be only two kinds of people that you will be able to talk to: prisoners, or the prison wardens. Both are essentially the same, two sides of the same coin, two expressions of CRIMINAL CONSCIOUSNESS. I have the theory that you gradually become like the people you live with. Therefore, no matter how pure or innocent you were at the start, spend enough time behind bars and you will become criminal yourself. Staying for a few weeks in here might be okay to see a different strata of Japanese life; however, I don't want to spend my whole life here!
Even spending this week in prison has been a distraction to my life; one way to recoup my losses is to publish this blog, PRISON JAPAN. I might be able to make a small amount of money from the Google AdSense ads on the top and side of the page. In contrast to some of my other blogs, this blog is original, THIS ONE IS FOR REAL, because I lived it myself. I LIVED THE KEYWORD... I can relate to the facts on the ground. And some of the well-paying keywords related to this blog might include: immigration lawyer in Japan... Tokyo attorney (attorney firms pay so much for AdWords, or so I have heard)... criminal law... criminal lawyer in Japan...
LIVE THE KEYWORD: that is the way to achieve Keyword Mastery, and it is my motto for today even though I am so far from a computer and the Internet, and locked inside a Tokyo ryuchijo lockup. If you are in trouble and need a lawyer, I have enough experience in the field to qualify as an Information Source. And regardless of my current imprisonment in Tokyo, I know that Information is the KEY to my future, and my ticket to subsistence and eventually wealth, and even riches.
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2007 ---- Destruction
of the Comfort Zones.
In my previous blog Moving
House I wrote that one of the reasons moving is so
painful and destabilizing, is that it involves the
INSTANT AND IRREVERSIBLE DESTRUCTION of vast layers of
comfort zones. By comfort zones, I am talking about the
habits and luxuries and fields of memory which shield us
from the essential pain and aloneness of being alive.
The experience I had back in late 2007, after moving to
east Tokyo, was this: stripped of the Internet and cable
TV, and all the pleasant (and unpleasant) associations
of my downtown home of six years, I fell into a deep
despair. I couldn't believe what had happened,
especially since moving had been my idea. It seemed like
a deep rupturing of fate, an earthquake (although it was
nothing compared to the coming tsunami of my
May arrest!) Once the initial shock of the 'quake wore
off, however, an interesting phenomenom emerged: I
realized that beneath the Comfort Zones eradicated by
the move, older Comfort Zones existed: latent but ready
to step forward and evolve to meet the current
challenge. For example, I couldn't work on my homepage
online, and that fretted me... but because I had a
computer and diskettes I could at least work on my
homepage OFFLINE, and upload new blogs at a later date
(at a friend's house, Internet cafe, etc.) In time, I
started getting used to the new arrangement, and started
enjoying it. My hope for the future returned... and my
east Tokyo home developed its first Comfort Zone.
If I thought Moving
House was tough, going to prison has been a personal
disaster of truly Biblical proportions. Nonetheless, I
have been here 6 days already, and I am still alive...
in fact, I am kind of settling in. I don't even have a
computer now, let alone a TV... but I have a very very
old Comfort Zone to fall back upon, one which dates from
my childhood but has fallen into disuse in the last
decade and a half: this is the Comfort Zone of writing
with a pen and a pad of paper. When I get out of here, I
will be able to type it up onto a text file on my east
Tokyo offline computer, save it to a disk, and then
upload it to the Net from a friend's house or Internet
cafe or whatever.
NOTE TO SELF: this new blog, this deadwood PRISON
JAPAN blog, is my homepage reborn on paper. I should
guard this document with my life. Even if my website
falls, this paper pad remains... waiting to be reborn
online. This is the lesson of May 2007.
Hope
Springs Eternal.
SUNDAY, MAY 20, 2007 ---- The
Underbelly of Japan.
One of the ONLY delights of
being a guest at the Kitazawa Police Station this past
week, was my discovery of the prison bathroom yesterday.
Spotlessly clean, the bathroom was like a classic
Japanese sento (bathhouse): all tubs and taps
and running water and in the center of it all, a large
communal bath filled right to the top. This being a
prison though, the characters in the bathroom were a
heck more colorful than those you would find in your
typical suburban sento. At one stage yesterday, the tub
was playing host to two young yakuza guys, at least one
of their backs covered with lurid tattoos. (As anyone
acquainted with Japan will know, tattoos are banned in
most Japanese communal baths.) It was like a scene from
an anime film, but the catch was: this was
real. And the fact it was real makes all the difference.
IMMIGRATION ATTORNEYS
Do you need advice with immigration issues or
legal representation in Japan? My 6.1 days of
imprisonment at the Kitazawa Police Station in western
Tokyo, and the contacts I have made inside in the time,
have given me some insight on the topic which I can pass
on to you. From my experience in the past week, it would
seem at least 20 to 30 per cent of the inmates are here
for immigration reasons. In other words, they don't have
proper visas (and some of them don't even have
passports.) And what countries are these illegal aliens
from: you guessed it China, Sri Lanka, The Phillipines,
and Thailand. Among others. Maybe there are some from
South America, but I haven't met any of them. The people
I have met, though, have been pretty interesting:
MONDAY, MAY 21, 2007 ---- Prison Planet.
It has now been a week since I was arrested after bursting out of a Tokyo karaoke club without paying the bill, and entered into captivity at the Kitazawa Police Station. It's funny how you get used to things. If some soothsayer had told me the weekend before last, that I would soon be spending an entire week behind bars, I would have laughed. Indeed, the first few days were hell. But interestingly, in the past 24 hours I have felt the beginning of a sense of ease, an acceptance of my fate here in lockup. The afternoons are tough, and I long to be outside, but on top of that, it is not actually that bad here. I just finished reading THE DA VINCI CODE last night, and acting upon my accomplice Dennis's advice, I started reading HARD RAIN this morning. It is appropriate the prison stocks a copy of this exploration of the seamy underside of Tokyo, when here there are probably yakuza to every cell. While the food is pretty basic here, it seems to be nutritionally balanced... and the complete prohibition on alcohol is no doubt doing wonders for my body. I have probably not gone a whole week without alcohol for more than 10 years!
Prison in Japan can be like staying at a health farm. I don't know how much weight I have lost since coming here, but I am sure it is substantial.
That said, I don't want to be here forever -- I won't be here forever. Being behind bars gives you plenty of time to think about the future. The irony is, the longer I stay inside, the more determined I will be to definitively change my life once I get out. Like leaving Japan and going back to Australia. But since I am in Japan for now, I might as well savor this rare opportunity to witness Japanese life, underworld style:
HARD RAIN
By Barry Eisler
This is the perfect read if, like me, you find yourself staying in a Tokyo lockup. At this police station there are three English books which can be borrowed by detainees: THE DA VINCI CODE, some dragon and dungeon epic, and HARD RAIN by American author Barry Eisler. When I first picked up the book I thought it was somehow related to BLACK RAIN, that infamous 1980s film about the Osakan underworld. Of course I was wrong. HARD RAIN is in fact a recent novel, published in 2003, and centered on Tokyo rather than Osaka. But it is just as noir, and judging by the first few pages, just as ruthless. The protagonist, John Rain, is as relentless a killer as you could imagine (and he is certainly a lot more believable than the albino monk in THE DA VINCI CODE.) His speciality seems to be assassinations designed to resemble death by natural causes. In the first few pages of the book, he eliminates a yakuza gym junkie by goading him into lifting beyond his limit. Rain then jumps on the bar to ensure it suffocates the poor yakuza. On the way home after the job, Rain encounters a group of chimpira, young lowlevel yakuza, at Nogizaka north of Roppongi-dori: