Who You Gonna Call?

Monday January 1, 1991

Yesterday was cold and gloomy. I continued cleaning the kitchen and then caught the 14:00 to Beppu. Treat myself to the set of five plates with the hare design at Tokiwa. Rent videos at Daichi Soft City. Run into Akamine-sensei while I'm buying groceries at Uneed. Take the 16:23 home. Cook sukiyaki and watch The Right Stuff. Read The Society of Mind in bed, but the fumes from the kerosene make me feel dizzy, so I turn off the lights to go to sleep.

At 12:58 TA calls to say Happy New Year and to see, once again, if I want to go out and party. I'm not in any mood for it though.

Then, at 04:00, I'm awakened again by a noise from the kitchen. Still mostly asleep, I first think it's TA, but, of course it couldn't be. Have the cats somehow gotten in? But cats can't slide back a fusuma. Someone else is in the apartment. I'm sitting up and completely awake now. "Who's there?" (Okay, I'm awake, but not very sensible, since I say this in English, and who the hell in Kamegawa-machi would understand anything I say in English.)

There is a silence, a holding of breath on both our parts. Then anger just flares up from the fear. I grab my solid maple back roller (as hard as a baseball bat) and storm into the kitchen, clutching my futon around me. (Yes, the truth is revealed, dear reader; I sleep in the nude.) I'm shouting obscenities that anyone who's watched an American action video would understand. At least the man standing in my kitchen understood the intent, if not the actual words. He scampered back out the kitchen window.

I'm left feeling a bit smug, but after the adrenaline rush dies down, I don't know what to do. I can't call the police. I mean that literally. I have no words to explain what happened, even if I do manage to get them to understand who I am and what my address is. And what if I did talk to the police. "Oh, the guy was in his teens or twenties, about 5 foot 5, slight build, dark hair, wearing black...who does that not describe?" I could go next door and wake Negoro-sensei, but I would have just as much trouble explaining it to her. And then she would worry and everyone at school would get upset. I just lock the kitchen window and go back to bed.

Wake at 08:30. Put the chili on. JQS calls and we talk for almost an hour.

Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
January 01, 1991

Comments

Hey there,

Nice MT you got going on. What are you doing in Japan? Teaching English?

Comment by: urban tea. Posted January 4, 2003 09:45 PM.

Wow, M-san. What a way to have started off the New Year. This was after you had been in Japan for a while, right? Good thing it wasn't within your first few months. I'm guessing nothing happened afterwards with regard to this experience? (i.e., the intruder didn't come back or you didn't find out who it was.) It's interesting that while our experiences with Japan are different in some ways, there are these commonalities. Having the language remain a real barrier, there is so much of what I would consider normal life (like calling a neighbor or the police after something like this) that we just kind of think about for a moment and then make do without. -Jason

Comment by: Jason Cha. Posted January 5, 2003 07:03 AM.

Yes, this was in the middle of my second year there. I lived in the school dorm, and although I locked my front door when I was out, usually the kitchen window and the sliding doors to the balcony were open (in hot weather, anyway)--something I would never do in the US.

I never found out anything more about the intruder. Since it was the winter holiday and the girls had gone home, I'm guessing he assumed that the apartment was empty. I think he was pretty surprised to find someone there, especially a shrieking American wielding a heavy object. I really do believe that he was more scared than I was.

I still felt (and still do feel) much safer in Japan than in America. For example, once very late at night, and somewhat drunk, I lost my wallet. I was walking through dark alleys back toward the bus stop where I thought I dropped it when these two young men started yelling and coming toward me. I was scared, but determined not to show it. Turns out they had found my wallet, opened it and seen my alien registration card, and started toward the train station on the guess that's where they'd find me. They returned the wallet and went off. Almost $300 (in yen, of course) was in it. Amazing. That would never, never happen in America!

Comment by: M. Posted January 5, 2003 09:30 AM.

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