Religion Tries To Break Into My Apartment, Please Send Me Blondes and Tragedy Hits the Headlines

It is noon. I am still asleep after yesterday’s long trip to another Office Day filling school hours away from me. An 8am rising, four hours of train travel in total, many transfers, more forced down cheeseburgers with no other restaurants but those golden arches around, another five lesson day, 30 children and a trainee I had to observe all mixed together to make a milkshake of sleepiness that resulted in me just crashing down into bed when I eventually made it back home at midnight. And now, it is noon and some bell is jarring me awake. My hair resembles something out of a horror movie, all slaughtered and mutilated by a night of tossing and turning, extruding out in little spikes punk rockers only dream of obtaining by natural means. Was that my alarm going off? I was not due to teach until later that evening and sure I did not set it. The phone? No, only that never ending tone there. My mind struggles to become fully alert while my body tries to roundhouse kick it back under the covers. My mind ducks, side sweeps my body and then comes to the realization that the ringing is coming from my doorbell. Do I even have a doorbell? I didn’t think I had a doorbell. Ding…dong… Well, wouldn’t you know it, I have a doorbell! The other times people have been at the door they have used the intercom system which I deem so unneeded. A doorbell, well that makes more sense. Both an intercom and a doorbell, well, that’s just a senseless overabundance of interior wiring. Bob Villa weeps. My bones creak and crack as I stand and my muscles, still sore from the eight hours of walking two days previous, cry out in a well-crafted composition of pain. I sit back down for a moment to show them mercy but the doorbell rings once again and I walk towards the door zombie like. I am about to unlock the latch when it strikes me that it is mighty drafty in this kitchen. I look down. I realize that I am not wearing any pants. The doorbell rings again. Funny how the mind works in such moments after just rising out of deep sleep. I actually found myself debating on whether or not I should return to my room to find something to cover my dangling lower extremities or just toss open the door pantsless because I was already standing there and the room looked so far away. I opted for something less likely to get me deported and returned, slipped on the closest pair of pants I could find, and returned to open the door.

Now, opening my door is always an adventure because of the 99.9% chance that the person on the other will not understand what I am saying and thus is forced to watch me perform an off-off-off-off-off-Broadway production of Foreigner In Japan Tries To Communicate The Only Way He Knows How. This play involves lots of quick motion, some garbled language skills, rapid skimming of a phrase book and sometimes, if they are lucky, a little song. Take two days ago, around the same time, when the gas company came to my door to inform me that I hadn’t paid my bill. “No money,” was the only English this tiny dwarf of a man in a blue jumpsuit could manage to say. I mentally prepared for this days performance by breathing in, holding up one finger to tell him to wait a moment, and inside I hurried to dig up my phrase book. Back at the door I found him reading my meter. I found out a little something about my gas at my most recent staff meeting. To my dismay I was told that my gas also heats up my water. So, you may recall that I was not using my gas stove to save valuable Yen to make coffee and tea. Sometimes I would just let the water run to ensure that it got up to the maximum seventy degrees as I typed away to somebody during a chat or read the evening news. Each trickle of lost hot water down the drain could now be viewed as dollar signs…err, Yen signs. Do not even get me started on my thirty minute showers! The man in the blue jumpsuit gazed up at me and again reminded me that I had not paid for my gas. I had to work quickly here to prevent the loss of the precious hot water I needed. No, not for showering. I could transform into some form of uber-slob for the remaining year and go showerless, if need be, but for the love of all things sacred do not, blue jumpsuited dwarf, take away my coffee!!!

I flipped open my phrase book to the B section and looked up Japanese for “bill”. I already knew the word for “no”. Let the show begin. This scene would be about how I have not received a bill from the gas company as of yet, only that notice, and I would gladly pay said bill if said bill had been sent to me. The midget in the jumpsuit did not understand. More words were needed, gestures had to be more frantic. I must have looked like a crazy many dancing and flapping about as I said snippits of words he could comprehend wrapped around a slew he could not. But I have become well trained in this art, a thespian of performances such as this, and managed to get that bulb over his dirty blue jumpsuit matching hat to click on long enough for him to realize that his company had forgotten to bill me. He said that he would send me a bill this week, I thanked him for not cutting off my coffee supply and he motored away on his white scooter, the common form of transport for people in this position of delivers of food. One of these days I am going to go all Chuck Norris on one of those Pizza Hut scooters to find out where the closest pizza place is located. I could really go for a stuffed crust meat lovers.

Ding-dongggggg….

Oh yes, there was somebody at there door and they were mighty persistent. I deduced that standing on the other side could be three possible people: 1) A delivery man with a couple of boxes that would contain the new course curriculum. Remember, April 1st is the start of the new school year and the company has revamped certain age groups and rearranged the entire course. This, of course, makes a large portion of what I was taught in those two training weeks obsolete only a month later. Really seems like I’ve purchased a top of the line computer here where two months later the next top of the line is rolled out to be superceded by the next big thing within minutes. All of my manuals for these age groups are now kindling and I have been told I will be sent other manuals to use. Some rumors abound that I would not get these manuals until June (and how this makes sense when I need to be teaching these lessons next week leaves me scratching a groove into my scalp) and others say they will arrive by the end of the week. Now, I have been taught ever so briefly the meat and potatoes of these new classes and had to demonstrate my grasp of them in--

Ding-donnggg… “I’m coming!”

--in our group meeting this past weekend. I had everything fairly well understood as this curriculum is much simpler then the old one. At the meeting, however, I was handed over my schedule for next month where I spied two classes that I had never heard of before? Orange! Lime! Those aren’t classes those are tasty beverages! I instantly brought this to the attention of my supervisor who informed me that I had missed training sessions for those days. Um, okay, yes, and….? My first class of April was to be a Lime class and I had no manuals, no training and no idea what age group these kids would be. My supervisor said that those manuals should be sent to me this week and we are now Thursday and they have not arrived. I expected this ringing doorbell to be them.

2) This was another package from you fine folks back home. Wow, mention that you are felling Smarties deprived in one blog post and you are sent the mother load of sweet circular candy coated goodness. I thank you all for the chocolate goodies for Easter (you know, I didn’t even realize it was Easter and forgot St. Patrick’s Day as well). They were hungrily eaten and were good treats after a day of work. You know what I really miss, though? I miss beautiful blonde women. Oh, and Porsches. I await your packages.

Ding-donnggg…

3) The third option, and I admit it was far less likely but possible, was that at my door would be a clan of punk rock gypsy hermaphrodites each riding a painted giraffe asking me to help them hide a member of their party who turns out to be Osama bin Laden with the Americans hot on his trail. Osama, now going under the name Tim, is dressed up as an Elvis Impersonator and has been working as a tour guide in Vegas since that terrible day in 2001. With him is his wife, a frail Japanese woman named Bruce who is training to be the world champion marshmallow and her son, Yuri, a Russian born Jew with only one nipple and a bad case of leprosy. Together they call themselves the Flying Zoltinas and would offer me a free show and all the giraffe meat I could eat if I would only provide them with some closet space. Again, less likely but possible.

Ding-dongggg….

Alright. Alright. I threw open the door, gunk in my eyes, hair matted this way and that, to find that I would be wrong on all three of my assumptions which is really two bad because I had a hankering for giraffe meat. Standing in the doorway were two professional dressed Japanese people, a man and a woman, with smiles so sharp that they could decapitate treasonous French monarchs. The books they carried. The pamphlets. All this looked strangely familiar. No…no, they could not be? I had traveled so far to escape them. They could not have found me here! It was the Jehovah witnesses! Preaching machines, unrelenting advocates of faith, I have battled the dreaded Jehovah witnesses from far and wide and now they had found me again. Finally, my lack of the Japanese language would work for me as I happily grinned back and explained to them that I did not know Japanese. Wait, what was that evil smiling man doing? He was reaching into his big, back bag of death! No, he couldn’t! He did! He had English pamphlets. Of all the times to not be wearing a death metal t-shirt and have my be-candled alter set up for Beelzebub. I told them no but they pushed on. I slowly started closing the door but they continued. I should of known, what other foul fiends would keep ringing a doorbell eight times after receiving no answer! Yes yes, I have heard your beliefs before. Jesus returned to earth in 1914, uh-uh, got it. Sure, all the wicked will be destroyed in the coming cleansing of the Earth by the Lord almighty. Okay, can I go… Sigh, yes yes, not a cross for but a torture stake…uh-huh, only 144,00 people are in heaven and all those who join you will live life renewed in paradise on Earth. Listen, my cat is on fire and I really should put it out. I have to run…what, take your literature. I can’t fucking read it, mame! Oh, you have English, no…no thank you…I have enough toilet paper. They hand it out at the train stations you know. Good day. Slam. Breathe. I had gone on to survive the Jehovah Witnesses once again. But wait, as an epilogue here as I was on my way out the door for work I found that those bastards had slipped one of their flyers into my mailbox even though I told them not to. Jehovah Witnesses, my friends, are the real Terminators. Arnold ain't got nothing on these machines of preaching destruction.

Big news story out this way attracting national headlines this week. On Monday a 22-year-old woman from England working as an English teacher for the NOVA company was found murdered in the Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo. In what could only be described as a crime scene straight out of a Hollywood thriller, the naked body of Lindsay Ann Hawker was found buried in sand in a bathtub out on balcony belonging to the man said to have killed her. She had been stripped, beaten, strangled and possibly buried alive as an autopsy revealed she may have died of suffocation. Her killer is believed to be a 28-year-old man named Tatsuya Ichihashi who, although the NOVA group originally denied any professional connection between the two, the press reports was a student of Hawker. Ichihashi was the owner of the apartment. Police were alerted by the company when Hawker wound up missing and a warrant was obtained by police to search Ichihashi’s apartment where the body would be found. Neighbors reported hearing hard slams against metal and the sounds of dragging. Ichihashi, despite the presence of several police officers, managed to evade being caught and escaped. A warrant is currently out for his arrest. The papers today are saying Hawker text messaged her boyfriend back home that somebody had followed her home, which she brushed off as bring “crazy Japan”. It is believed that Hawker was giving private lessons to him and the water cooler gossip going about says the two were in a relationship which was more then just teacher in student as Hawker was at the residence a few days prior to her body being found. The validity of this has been unconfirmed and could very well be the British media being, well, the sensationalistic British media. Private lessons are common for foreign teachers. Many do it outside of their regular job for extra money. These are outside lessons, usually in your home or the home of the student, and can be obtained by many means. People may walk up to you on the street, there may be an online posting or newspaper ads seeking English help are all common ways of getting private lessons. Hawker’s father arrived in Tokyo today to identify the body. At a press conference this morning, weeping and clutching a photograph of his daughter used by the media, he said: “"I'll carry this picture for ever. And I'll not rest until the man who killed her is caught."

In reading online forums this morning and comments posted under news articles about this death, some teachers here are frightened, others believe the companies who don’t pay foreigners enough to live out here thus sending out on potentially dangerous private lessons are to blame while most feel agree that this was a tragic death that hopefully will spark awareness in the community of foreign teachers living here. Here are a smattering of comments found online:

“As many gaijin posters in Japan are in the illustrious field of eikaiwa I guess its not surprising that some idiots are using this tragic event as a selfish opportunity to blame language chains like Nova. If you are here on a teaching visa for a school it's illegal to take on privates, I'm sure Nova would have intervened if they had known about it. So aside from being applauded for having rules to avoid things like this, versus smaller chains that don't enforce the rule, Nova should perhaps be more strict by firing and taking away the visa of any eikaiwa who is found breaking the terms of their visa on the spot. That way they can both avoid these incidences hopefully altogether in the future, both for themselves and the safety of their staff. They know how much they are going to make before the sign a contract, and you won't find better wages in any other Asian country for simply being a native speaker with any degree, so they are not being forced to prostitute themselves to privates to survive. If something like this occurred at, to or coming from a official school function, or even at her school supplied residence you would have room to argue. But like virtually every other instance with Nova teachers breaking the law you hear about, they were violating their contract in the process.”

“I think people get into this idea that hey Japan is so safe, nothing will ever happen to me or hey I'm western, even if the person is a girl, these small, shy Japanese men can't hurt me, I'm tough. You still have to be careful in Japan and and in this world no matter where you are or how safe you think it might be. Japan is not the same Japan it used to be, and bad stuff happens everywhere, and women especially, need to be so very careful. It's not just Japanese women that are looking for western men, Japanese men are looking for western women and there are alot of messed up people in this world. It's just such a shame..it's terrible...I don't want to hear about how it might have been her fault....murder is murder and it happens and its terrible and no one deserves something like this to happen to them or their family. My condelences to the family. Anyway, this is just shocking. “

“Could you imagine the uproar if this was the other way around? for example an English teacher killing a student? ..... they would crucify us all in the media.”

“Japan is a "safe" country in many regards. However, it not perfect and it's not Lala land where you can leave your doors unlocked and not watch the behavior of people around you - which many folks seem to do when they get here. Most of the Japanese people I know are shocked and very upset that this is happened - not because it ruins Japan's image abroad, but because a woman was killed. Stop lumping the Japanese, Japanese males... into one category. We hate it when the Japanese do it to us gaijin so why do gaijin feel the need to do it back?”

“The laws here are arbitrary, don't expect anything in the favor of the foreigners either. The family should sue that lousy police force, they're just as criminal as the murderer for letting him just walk away. Everyone spends so much money on taxes, but it's not poured into the military like America does, so where does it all go? Apparently not to the police force, apparently it pays for criminals to enjoy an easy and carefree life in Japan!”

“I am a close friend of Lindsay’s after going to Leeds university with her where we did a degree in Biology. We went on field trips together, out drinking together and spent much time together. She was a caring, friendly and funny young woman who had the rest of her life in front of her. She did not have a bad word to say about anybody. How anyone could do this to her is beyond belief. My thoughts are with all her family and everyone who she loved or was loved by (the list will be very long knowing Lindsay as I do). What a tragic waste of a fantastic life. Full of energy, full of humour and full of love. Rest in peace Linz. Hope they catch this animal and soon. I wish I could hand out his punishment when he is caught.”

“This just makes me shudder, when I think of the number of times that I've arranged private meetings with students, or even arranged to give lessons to people that I had never actually met in person before. Many English teachers here do it without a second thought. A few years ago after some rather unpleasant experiences, I simply stopped accepting male students, and will now only deal with females. It doesn't seem fair, but the way that some men behave here, especially when they come in close quarters with Western women ...”

And the thing is, Foreign women, especially blondes and redheads, in Japan do have to keep their guard up maybe a little more then most strictly because of how much they stand out to potential predators and how rare a commodity they might be to some men here. My Lonely Planet guide devotes an entire three paragraph to the dangers of foreign women traveling here. The opening sentence does not offer much reassurance of safety to women: “Japan is one of the worlds safest countries in which to travel –if you’re a man.” Women here have to deal with train fondlers, stalkers and harassment. Obvious issues abound for Japanese women too if entire train cars have to be reserved for them. The best book out there pertaining to the subject of females residing in this country is by Caroline Pover and is entitled “Being A Broad in Japan: Everything a Western woman needs to survive and thrive”. In the wave of this horrible event, one of Lindsay Hawker’s sisters put things into perspective and offered very wise advice to everyone working and living in another country: "Our sister Lindsay was our best friend. She was extraordinary in so many ways," said Lisa Hawker. "Like so many people our age she wanted to see the world, and for some reason felt safer in Japan than in this country. We are all made constantly aware of the dangers on our own streets. Thousands of young people go abroad each year, and for some reason the dangers of home seem to be forgotten. If Lindsay's death can make at least one young person abroad be more vigilant, then perhaps one more family can be spared the pain, the devastation, and the despair we are all experiencing."

Stay safe out there, journeymen and women, wherever you are.