Since the original thread has broken WordPress’s nesting, please use this to continue the conversation.
If you made a comment there and want to get a reply, please copy-paste to here, thanks!
Assfinger II
Leave a comment
54 Comments.
Trackbacks and Pingbacks:
- Sara Errani Admits She Avoided Tennis Tournament in Tokyo: Feared Radiation | Japan Probe - Pingback on 2012/02/05/ 10:09
You forgot to mention “Electric Boogaloo.”
OK, seems to work.
Seems like deportation problems spreading. CJ should probably be VERY careful how he uses twitter going forward:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/30/tweet_deportation/
@chuckers: Heh, perhaps they should have written about the Limey Lock-up, Pommy Prison or by the look of them, the Chav Clink to get more sympathy.
OK, this is just a theory, and it’s incredibly speculative, but bear with me.
I’ve been struck by the way that, subsequent to the story turning up on his blog, Johnson doesn’t refer to his home life in Japan very much (in particular his partner), and his gaijin barfly rants against Japan in general (apparently prefigured in his upcoming novel, which I am presuming was mostly written before his exclusion) suggest someone ready to leave. In his rants, he’s not pissed off with immigration, he’s pissed off with the whole place. And he’s plainly terrified of radiation from Fukushima.
And then I came across a twitter exchange today from a few days ago. The NYT’s Hiroko Tabuchi apologetically asks him about his visa status after he’d sent her a message, and his reply was “ur right, I don’t like getting asked. I’d rather forget the whole nightmare, coach tennis full-time. Thanks for asking.”
He’s continued since then to pursue a defence of his story, but it got me thinking: Was this his way of leaving the country and his partner? It’s a ridiculous thought, I know, but from near the beginning, he didn’t seem like a person that focussed on getting back. Other accounts of being forced to leave inevitably mention the difficulties of seeing their partner again, financial arrangements for apartments and so on. He just talks about “Japan”. He even drools over Li Na on twitter, which is not something I’d do if I had recently been forceably separated from my wife.
His original story contained no extra research at all into his own case. He hadn’t contacted Asiana, hadn’t looked up gun laws, hadn’t researched security companies, hadn’t gotten letters from embassies, and so on.
He also ducks questions about when he thinks he’ll able to come back. afaik, there are time limits to exclusions connected to visa offences. If it were me, I’d be strategising out the next year to five years constantly. I’d mention appeals and dates. But that’s because I’d be desperate to get back.
It’s complete speculation, but it’s a thought that keeps rearing its head. Perhaps the exclusion happened at the right time for him.
By the way, Asiana have repeated their denial of any wrongdoing. They state clearly that they do not have a policy of enforcing payment. This will no doubt encourage the theory that between immigration and the airlines, a mysterious and armed Mongolian-Korean-Japanese middleman criminal organisation exists that neither the airline, nor immigration know about, that processes the fees for hotels and flights home with nobody knowing.
@VK:
I do find it mildly strange that his “partner” doesn’t seem to have taken to twitter or myspace or blogs saying that CJ has been kept from her waiting arms. She just posts tour dates an thanks to her fans. Granted, she doesn’t appear to be an avid poster to such things anyway. At least as far as I could find.
Of course, this is assuming CJ hasn’t embellished the story of that relationship as well.
@VK:
I’ve certainly heard about 1 and 5 years exclusions for overstayers caught inside Japan or on their way out. Don’t know how it works for people who are just denied entry.
IIRC, in the recent story about two Brits who were denied entry at LAX for flippant twittering, there was no time limit given, but they now have to apply for a visa if they want to return. Can’t just go on spec. with the VWP.
Might be the same thing — all CJ has to do is get his application into the nearest embassy…
If he wants back…
If she wants him back…
And what of the dogs?
Unbelieveably, the Economist is now linking to the story in another comment section
http://www.economist.com/comment/1237095
The Japanese authorities refused to discuss the circumstances of Mr Johnson’s deportation when contacted by The Economist, but the country’s immigration service emerges with little credit for the manner of the deportation, even if the reasons for it are still murky.
I want to research a wider piece on the way immigration officials in the developed world treat arriving foreigners whom they don’t want to allow in. More specifically, I would like to hear what happens when the foreigners being turned away reckon they have the right (and the correct paperwork) to be allowed in.
This is how the Economist works. These little turns of phrase to leave you holding entirely unfounded impressions (long as it fits their narrative of the day) yet feeling so reassuringly informed.
That is speculative. I want to know why him and how on earth do as many people get away with visa abuse and then things like this blow up like they do.
I spend a lot a time and Japan and met a lot of people, when I was younger and I got over the rose colored glasses period of my stint in Japan I tried to see the country from the street up, hung with a lot of punks met some Yakuza etc…
I’m sure you all remember the Iranians selling phone cards back in the day, how many had visas or were doing the phone card thing on construction visas. Thats two illegal acts and they prospered for years.
Had an Israeli acquaintance who was putting her self threw nursing school while selling jewelry in the streets of Tokyo on a tourist visa, She came back every summer for a number of years.
Once I met a group of strippers all working in Roppongi on an assortment of visas all arranged by their employer, someone pulled strings in high places and it was amazing how they took it for granted.
I had a friend who was a street performer who had an engineering visa..he wasn’t an engineer! His good friends father owned an engineering company and swung it for him.
I’m sure they’re thousands of other people doing this, If I came across so many (one guy) how many could their possibly be?
So the system is pretty loosey goosey, and/or just plane corrupt. Its leaves me to speculate that maybe he was on a list, conspiratorial yes! He was sticking his nose in all the wrong places up north in the Hot Zone and asking too many questions. They just didn’t want to be furthered embarrassed in the West.
Don’t go ape shit, I’m just speculating and there’s no shortage of speculation on this site.
@VK:
Interesting. Your idea is the flip side of my theory.
He was doing a visa run or some sort of visa scam, and was genuinely shocked to get caught (educated white people don’t get busted by Immigration!
). So this whole grand conspiracy story is mainly about making an excuse for the “partner”, the publicity is a side benefit. My wife gets furious if I just leave my dirty socks on the floor. If I fucked up my visa and got deported, she would track me down and kill me. Literally.
“It’s not my fault, baby! The evil Immigration department is screwing me over and threatening me ‘at gunpoint’ because the government is afraid of my awesome ‘journalism’ revealing the ‘Trooooth’ of Fukushima!”
is a much more tempting excuse for the reality-challenged than,
“Honey, I fucked up my visa and will possibly never see you again. Rent is due first of the month. CU L8R!”
But I was being charitable and assuming he wanted to be with her, and that it is a serious relationship.
Heck, I’m also being charitable in assuming he is not 100% divorced from reality.
The simplest explanation of all is that he’s just nuts, and there is no reason to be found behind any of his actions without years of psychoanalysis. 
Well, I think we both agree that the “partner” angle is very important to the story of WTF really happened and why. It’s a delicate matter to speculate about someone’s love life. But the hints you’ve found seem to point to something.
@Greg2: The thing is, we can be pretty certain now that he didn’t actually have a visa or valid permit to enter. Greg Clark’s informant says that Johnson tried to harangue his way out of the problem – which fits both the online personality of Johnson, and the circumstances (drinking, lack of sleep).
We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Johnson is not a bigshot reporter, and few people read his stuff. I get the impression that very few of the Tokyo based correspondents know him or knew much of him before this. On Fukushima he wrote articles for the Washington Times (minor, moonie-funded paper) which seem often to be summaries of other English-language newspaper stories with a few human interest bits thrown in. One doesn’t get the impression he’s a threat to national security.
There also is no track record, as far as I know, of Japan using visa restrictions to control foreign journalists.
@Greg2:
Possibly it’s a matter of degree. To get away with it you have to go big, and CJ just didn’t go big enough. He pushed the envelope, but not hard enough. If he lied, his lies weren’t outrageous enough to be believable.
And it’s also possible that back in the day, when the economy was booming, it might actually have been more in Japan’s interest to have immigration turn a blind eye here and there…
@VK:
So, it looks like The Economist may be planning a feature article on this.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?
@iago: How are they going to distinguish between the bleaters and the genuine cases?
@iago: Well it was speculation. I get it when you say “big enough”
“My girlfriend is pregnant and we’re getting married in two weeks” That could of done it. All he had to do is have her in on the lie and he could of been in.
@VK:
Not sure they will care.
@iago: The economist magazine or the blawg? I wonder if the blawg has any editorship, I didn’t look at the fine print. So many blogs don’t but you would think the economist would be the exception, thats why I’m amazed that they let this one get way from them.
@Greg2:
Well, I’m speculating, but they may be using the blog as a feeder for the magazine. The wording suggests he wants to extrapolate CJ’s tale into a magazine feature. Bet the Brit Twitterers (not) in LA piqued his interested too.
@VK: Good point VK, he doesn’t seem to be missing his woman much, not compared to his dogs…
It sort of reminds me of a reverse version of Level3′s comment on this story…
Greg2: a slight correction:
The “system WAS pretty loosey goosey.” Iranian phake phone cards, Isreali jewerly dealers, etc. were common sights in the 20th century when the bubble was deflating and the immigration policy of the 80s (“unchecked amounts of unskilled labor is good for the GDP and the economy”) hadn’t yet been re-tuned to reflect the realities of the knowledge based economy and globalization. No comment as to whether this is a good thing or not.
This loosey goosyness doesn’t exist so much in the 21st century. Especially with the pop of the eikaiwa bubble.
The system hasn’t been that loosey goosey for decades.
@Eido Inoue: Fair enough! It has become more difficult but it still a bit malleable. Resonantly, I know this guy who set up a dummy company complete with website, business address etc… with the help of a lawyer and his wealthy landlord.
I guess he found a lawyer that knew how to work the system and it cost him a reasonable 500.000 yen in legal fees.
That gave him a year to freelance in Tokyo until he sorted something else out, He didn’t have a degree in anything so attaining a visa threw teaching was out of the question. The day had of come were he had to show a list of clients to immigration or income/proof he has been doing something to gain the next years visa and I’ve noticed the web site is gone. I’m assuming he back to his home country or working a new angle.
I think if CJ really wanted a visa he could of gotten one, if there’s a will there’s a way.
@Greg2:
“I think if CJ really wanted a visa he could of gotten one, if there’s a will there’s a way. ”
Like a will to get a marriage visa, for example. If he tries to get one NOW to get back into Japan, given his behaviour, any Immigration department in the world be negligent not to do a very thorough check into whether it is a wedding of convenience. And in the course of their investigation into the legitimacy of his relationship, he would be forced to admit on record that he had been:
A. Residing full time with her during his period of questionable visa status.
B. The breadwinner who paid for rent etc., earned by working during questionable visa status.(This is assumed, but not a stretch, since he was bragging about spending $50,000 in Japan in 2011 alone.)
So basically, he could be deported, really deported, with the “don’t come back for 5 years” condition and a criminal record (I believe), this time for violations of Immi law preceding his first deportation, which I believe is more technically just “denial of entry” for not having a visa or proof of being a tourist. I could be wrong, but I think that technically, being denied entry does not make one a “criminal” as you were prevented from breaking the law (unless they can nail you for making false statements)
But if he really did have work visas all along, and the latest one really did expire during the 2 days he was gone, I suppose he has nothing to worry about on that front and we can expect him to be planning the wedding at this very moment, for the sake of his dog at least.
@Greg2: And if I may, when he was at the Shinagawa office he asked the woman behind the counter the chances the application would be successful , She said, ” High because there aren’t a lot of French applicants” Now granted she’s just the woman behind the counter not the bureaucrat in charge of the application but, what does that mean?
By the way, this is a different French person other than the one a mentioned before. The one who was deported had no desire to live in Japan, he was comfortable in France. His desire was the Japanese woman he was pursuing.
@Greg2: There is no such thing as a perfect method that keeps 100% of the people trying to fool the system out: be it immigration, taxes, employment, etc. Most would be happy with a 90% effectiveness rate.
Having to pay ¥500,000 up front to get in the country is a high enough barrier to keep most people from using that method*. Remember that some people think that anything over ¥50,000 is too much for a round trip ticket to Canada during the peak holiday season.
* I’m not saying that people willing to pay extreme amounts to circumvent proper immigration should be ignored; I’m worried about human trafficking and indentured servitude related to the sex trade… as poor illegal immigrants go into debt to shady operators to get in a country.
Our favourite expellee has been busy:
Mr Johnson has been going off on one on Twitter about JapanProbe. They reported on an Italian tennis player who refused to play in Tokyo last September because of radiation fears.
Johnson retorted: extreme cowardice: blame healthy young female athletes for fearing nuclear radiation during meltdown.
“Nastiness” I could understand as a coherent comment, whether or not I agree with it. “Patronising wankiness” would pass the sense test. But “cowardice”? About people who didn’t flee, talking about someone too scared to come, said by someone who fled? Shaky grip on the language. And he’s quite clearly got a phenomenally loose grip on sciencey things. I’m surprised he’s got the courage to touch his computer.
Anyway, the plot thickens a little bit: I had a look at his twitter feed, and two things stand out. The smaller thing is that to someone looking for a child’s desk, he says “you can take one from my house if you can break in”. To me this is odd, as I thought he shared at least two dogs with his partner. If she doesn’t live there, does his partner not at least have a key to his house? Is that another part of his story that he made up? (It would fit either Level3′s or my speculative version of events, so alas it’s not a deal-breaker).
The bigger interesting thing (unless I’ve got the visa rules wrong) is that he has now come clean that he was denied entry for “insufficient funds”. Doesn’t this mean he was trying to enter on a tourist visa? Didn’t he deny this at some point? It really does look like he was turned away for a straightforward attempt to violate visa rules. And for this…
…for this he’s going on on twitter about “cruel Japan” and who gets to fail, succeed, and succeed in spite of it. Yet at the same time, he’s developing a theory that what happened to him (the shaking down, the gun etc.) is the work of a third party security company that has hurt both him and Asiana. In other words, not “Japan” at all. Not even “Japanese immigration”. Still, those cruel Japanese, eh?
Of course, this may all be a real-life black comedy, and an ageing paranoid Japanese-hating dissembling prose-wrecker of dubious journalistic integrity has actually stumbled upon a genuine scam going on among the airline security companies. I kind of hope that’s true, because when he keeps putting his name next to people who have genuinely suffered, I feel quite nauseous.
One last curiosity. A flattering review of Debito was conducted by one “Victor Fic” of Canada in Asia Times (which is also now carrying Johnson’s tale written by Johnson himself). Victor Fic also popped up on the NBR forum discussing Johnson’s case to defend him against the perfidious Japanese. Is there some kind of anti-Japanese Canadian mafia forming?
@VK:
“Insufficient funds” is the stock excuse they give for catching somebody on a visa run and denying a 90 day temporary landing permit that is close to another one.
Not just in Japan either.
Watch shows like “Border Patrol Security” on the web and you can see Australian customs give the same excuse (“insufficient funds”, inquiries about how much money they have) for denying people… to “westerners” and other people.
Insufficient funds has the sly connotation that “you must be working (doesn’t matter if overseas or domestically) or attempting to get work soon” combined with a belief that they do not intend to stay for a short visit (lack of a return ticket, lack of evidence of a hotel reservation or the ability or intent to make one, etc).
The only defense against the insufficient funds charge is to fulfill all of these:
a) have proof that you are unemployed and/or
b) have proof that you can remain comfortably unemployed (you’re wealthy) for periods of six to nine months or more.
or
c) have evidence suggesting your stay in Japan is temporary (confirmed lodging in licensed hotels/inns/ryokans (not homes) etc, and a detailed verifiable travel itinerary with an end date, etc) and you can pay for it.
@Eido Inoue:
ugh… stupid smartphone and wet fingers. mentally edit the “and/ors”. you know what I mean.
@Eido Inoue: is it possible they were asking him about Fukushima (if they did indeed ask) because they were asking him if he had been working on a tourist visa?
It’s going to be interesting how far he gets Asiana to investigate.
@VK: Is he actually trying to get Asiana to investigate?
Oh, and Mr Johnson, since I suspect you are reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
@VK:
In the (at least the) initial versions of the story he was pulled aside immediately after scanning his passport without any questions. That usually means somebody fits the computer profile of an visa runner: two or more very long stays too close to each other to fit the pattern of tourist or business trips.
During the subsequent interrogation, the interviewer will ask a lot of questions in rapid fire attempting to determine if you had been working or are attempting to be, including detailed questions about your employer and the nature of your employment.
The trick they use is that tourists/business people that visit a country either for a business trip or a vacation for a week (or even two weeks), have a very simple story.
But if you’ve been in the country for almost a few months or more, and then attempt to come back soon afterwards, it’s VERY hard to make your story — and the answers to their increasingly cross-referenced and clarifying questions that go deep into your cover — sound plausible without doing something that’s in violation of being on a 90 day temp landing permit, which is pretty much limited to being a tourist or a businessman visiting a client or attending some meetings, conference, or training.
Remember, immigration does this all day long, so they’re very good at finding and poking holes in fabricated tales of supposed legit extended stays. Because they’ve heard everything.
@Ken Y-N (aka Tepido Naruhodo): The only information he’s passed on from Asiana as far as I know is what they’ve tweeted in response to other people tweeting them about the story. No sign of any investigative reporting in that sense. Security companies shaking down people at airports for money is a HUGE story. MASSIVE. If they’re masquerading as Asiana employees, that’s an international scandal. But he appears more concerned with attacking the entirety of the country rather than actually pursuing the details of what happened.
@Eido Inoue: Thanks for your detailed account. It matches the details he gives.
One wonders how he failed to understand he was not allowed to come in on a tourist visa to work. Perhaps he had drunk too much and his Japanese was too poor. Or perhaps he was knowingly trying to deceive the authorities. (Which would be ironic, given the number of pixels he’s used to accuse “Japan” of dishonesty.)
Given his love of omission, I think the gun story might be understood as “I asked the immigration officer what the gun was for and he told me”, only he forgot to mention that he had asked the question.
WARNING: my next comment is going to be long; it’s an old blog post of mine. I used to host this story on a now defunct blog. Unlike other tales (ahem) you’ve read, this Canadian is upfront with him admitting to getting caught gaming the system, and he doesn’t embellish his story with life & death tales.
The point of me posting: you should probably take the intersection of the details between this and the CJ tale with the intersection of the Amnesty reports, and you’ll probably get something that’s fairly reliable as to a typical experience for somebody not let in due to visa violations.
There are lots of stories about what happens to the majority non-Japanese population in Japan (Chinese and Koreans) when they オーバーステイ {ōbāsutei} (“overstay”, work without a proper visa), but it’s unusual to hear a story about what happens to the average white Canadian kid when they attempt to game the system.
I knew the person who wrote this article, albeit briefly, when I had just moved from Ōsaka to Tōkyō in the late 90s. We were supposed to meet again at a bar in Shinjuku. I later found out this was what happened to him. Most non-Japanese you meet, especially if they are from developed Western countries, rarely last more than three years in Japan. Few, however, are kicked out like this person. The article is quite old; I believe it was written around 1999. The events occurred around 1997. Chuck Blade is a pseudonym referring to the steak / chain in Canada.
Genki desu ka?
By Chuck Blade
Clearing customs and immigration are a couple of standard procedures that nevertheless make air travel both tedious and a little nerve-racking for me. So it was with some trepidation that I stepped up to the red line in Narita International Airport and waited for the next available immigrations official. “I see you have already been in Japan for three months. Why is it you wish to return?” the officer asked. I had rehearsed this scene in my mind a hundred times so, despite the convulsions in my chest, I coolly replied, “I have spent most of the previous three months in and around Tōkyō and I didn’t get to see much of the rest of the country. I would like to see more of Japan particularly Hokkaidō and do some skiing or perhaps travel to Nagano and see the Olympic Village.”
I had come to Japan three months prior following the thousands who came before me in search of the fabled treasures to be had teaching English there and like many of them I had met with little success on my initial three month stay. Now I was giving it a second shot having left for Bangkok a week before my visa was due to expire. I was re-entering with the excuse to do more sightseeing.
I could tell by the rather long pause that the immigration officer wasn’t buying my story. Then the three words I didn’t want to hear, three simple words, innocent in themselves and their general usage, but that day they carried a hammer strike against the thin veneer of my coolheadedness and shattered it into a million tiny specks of dust.
“One moment please.”
That’s all it took and I knew that it was not going to be my day. I cursed myself. What had I done wrong? Where had I blown it? Looking down the counter I saw him returning with his supervisor. My mind snapped back to the premonitory sensation I had awoken with in Bangkok, which I wrote off as nerves on account of having spent a sleepless night at the airport waiting for my early morning flight, that later took on the proportion of ominous foreshadow as I read a harrowing letter written to The Bangkok Times about an American’s abduction and detention by Thai Immigration Police.
The foreboding brought on by his story; the smelly, overcrowded cell with nothing but a hole in the ground for thirty men to shit and piss in, did not ease off after my smug thoughts about the poor sucker. Not only did he have the shit end of the stick he had it rammed down his throat by getting nabbed in Bangkok where, during the week I was there, police had conducted a summary execution of six alleged drug dealers during a brutal crackdown by Thai police on drug gangs.
I was taken out of the line up and walked to one of the main walled off central rooms. I would regain my advantage by resorting to the letter my girlfriend had written for me mentioning that I would be a guest at her aunt’s home for my stay in Hokkaidō.
“So Japan is a very small island. Why do you want to come back?” the supervisor asked me while shaking his head back and forth. I replied as before and showed him the letter. This gave him some pause and he looked at it without saying anything for about a minute. Then he asked in a very casual way whether I knew any other Japanese people, as if not impressed with the letter, and could I write down their names and phone numbers? After handing me pen and paper I searched for my journal and, resting the paper on one knee and my journal on the other, I complied. Again in a casual tone as if to feign disinterest he asked me, while I was writing, what had I done in my three months in Tōkyō? Where did I go? What did I see?
This cheap tactic didn’t phase me much and I easily answered him spinning a yarn about nights out with friends in Shibuya and Shinjuku, watching kabuki theatre, a weekend trip to Kōbe, being a guest at a number of Japanese homes, etc. when with the same casual manner he reached over and picked up my journal. As he leafed through it I saw his frown deepen while he read the pages that had my interviews listed with salary quotes, particulars of the school, terms of the contract and watched his eyes narrow into a mean, icy stare as he scanned the various schedules of my three part-time English teaching jobs.
“You have a lot of explaining to do,” he said coldly and with that left me sitting there panic-stricken while I watched him photocopy the contents of it. A wave of fear-nausea surged through me, leaving a cold sweat on my forehead and back, that slowly congealed into a hard tumour in the pit of my stomach. Now I had good reason to believe that the days presentiment might in fact manifest into reality and I would not get back into Japan thus stranding my students, my employers, and my sweet and tender girlfriend who was nervously waiting for me to come back to our apartment. I rationalized, “They can’t prove anything. It isn’t illegal to look for work as a tourist.” It was cold comfort. I futilely tried to remember the complete contents of my journal.
I looked at the immigration officer hunched over the photocopier methodically photocopying every page. I looked at the clock and agonizingly watched the minutes slowly pass while the seconds kept time with the noise of the machine and the green flash of light reflecting off the bare, white concrete walls. I knew the only way to go was to play this bluff right to the very end because now I was caught and under very strong suspicion of working illegally. I desperately believed I still had a faint hope of clearing immigration and a level head was called for if I was going to talk my way out of this.
My thoughts drifted back to Bangkok hoping to snatch a brief respite from the grim prospects the day was offering me. If Tōkyō can be seen as a model city convincingly fusing its history with its stunning modernity boasting low crime and unemployment rates, a highly efficient and impressive transit system and a level of affluence reflected in the buildings, public works and thriving commerce, then Bangkok is the complete and utter antithesis to it. Everywhere during the hour long trip from the airport Bangkok’s future lay forsaken in its streets. The machinery of abandoned public works projects rusting in the boulevards, the concrete skeletons of apartment buildings housing rat trap shacks of scrap wood, tin and cardboard and at regular intervals along all the streets huge, gaudy, Barnum & Bailey paintings of the peoples proud king lit with flood lights beaming arrogantly into the surrounding polluted darkness.
I had missed the hot summer in Tōkyō when the temperature soars into the high 30° Celsius range taking the pollution count up with it but in Bangkok the heat, the exhaust, and the sewage produced an unrivalled olfactory assault that left me screwing up my face in disgust. Standing on that rickety bus its wooden floorboards rattling dangerously beneath me, as the driver squealed, bounced and jostled us at high speeds in and out of traffic, I watched block after block of the terrible urban decay the extent of which I had never witnessed before. I recalled a boasting Italian recounting to me how Rome was “one great open air museum.” Perhaps this is so then Bangkok must be one great open air sewage depot. As the bus sped on into the night toward my destination, one of the “foreigner districts” on Kaosarn road, I thought about the bizarre scene that greeted me as I stepped out of the airport terminal to wait on the highway for the bus.
Waiting at the stop adjacent to eight lanes of two-way traffic, congested with fast moving vehicles that paid no mind to road etiquette since there existed no visible lines of paint to divide up the lanes, broken down doorless trucks and smashed up jury rigged cars drove frantically on as a group of teenagers sat in a circle on the concrete traffic island drinking, singing songs and throwing rocks at passing drivers. If this wasn’t surreal enough of a sight at 1am then a sound in the weeds directly behind the stop startled me. A moan then a movement in the bushes and an old mangy dog ambled out slowly with its head down labouring through the stifling heat and exhaust. It came to within three feet of where I was standing but paid no attention to me or the cars as it slumped its tired old body down on the curb. Staring at it breathing with increasing difficulty, as more and more time gradually elapsed between each breath, I watch its body convulse and then it died. When the bus arrived the official who took the fares stepped down and before I could get on kicked the carcass back into the bushes while passengers leaned out the window laughing.
“Come with me sir,” the supervisor commanded breaking me out of my reverie; in his right hand the photocopied contents of my Tōkyō journal fitted neatly in a stiff transparent plastic baggy with a yellow zip-lock seal. Like the absurd level to which merchants in Tōkyō applied wrapping to their merchandise here was my fate sealed for freshness. I walked with him back out and past the crowds gathering continually at the immigration counter and down a corridor into a waiting room where three other foreign nationals milled about looking very worried and nervous. A black guy was pacing the room when some Japanese officials came and led him off. The rest of us sat silently waiting our turn grimly eyeing each other. In a few moments he came back gesturing wildly and shouting the first words spoken in over ten minutes. “I can’t believe it! They’re sending me back! Even though I got my papers and passport and everything!” He trailed off and began pacing again only this time right beside me, all the time cursing and shaking his head in disbelief. I had collected my nerve and courage only to have it undermined by this whining bastard. I was next and followed another Japanese official into the office of the senior immigration officer. A short balding man obsequiously suggested I sit down, all the time smirking to himself.
“So you wish to come back to Japan?” the senior immigration officer asked before I had even sat down. As I looked up he was smiling. Actually he had never stopped. In fact his grin had broadened so that his face now took on the appearance of being a pair of black horned rim glasses and a set of buck teeth away from that delightful American caricature of the Japanese used for propaganda purposes in GI cartoons during World War 2. His balding head was cropped with military precision. He was a short stout man named Suzuki. I mechanically repeated my story while he waited ever so patiently with his hands folded in front of him, head tilted to one side, smiling a smile barely concealing an expression that knew he had me dead to rights.
“Please, write for me your itinerary while you were in Tōkyō.” I let the paper and pen sit on his desk briefly and wondered how I was going to convince an immigration officer whose vacation time was limited to one week a year, his Golden Week, and, if he left the country at all, it was on some “Three Cities In Seven Days” charter tour with dozens of other Japanese whose idea of vacationing consists of hotels and sightseeing buses. He motioned with his hand palm up towards the paper. Halfheartedly I picked it up and made my second error. I lied. I panicked and thought the account of my time spent in Tōkyō wouldn’t hold water so I mentioned how I had also spent time visiting a friend in Ōsaka, something I had never done. Without a nanoseconds pause he sprung his trap.
“Ōsaka!” He belched in mock surprise. Now his questions were coming rapid fire not giving me a chance to finish answering completely. This attempt to phase me was working quite well as I tried to backpedal and explain that my time in Japan was not defined by the number of temples I visited or kabuki plays I saw but I was getting defensive and he sensed it. It was also obvious he was enjoying himself watching me squirm. I resorted again to the letter my girlfriend had written in the desperate attempt to gain some advantage.
As he glanced at the letter he asked for a list of names and numbers of people I knew in Tōkyō. In my wallet was my phone list of friends who I trusted to have the presence of mind to cover for me if a phone call was made. He wasn’t giving me a moments advantage and it began to look like he would only release me when he was sure I was on my way out of the country. Fumbling for my private phone list I considered this man Suzuki: my prosecutor, judge, and jury. Here was a man who obviously relished his work. I didn’t doubt this short official ended his days work in the bars with his staff drunkenly recounting the catches of the day like a bunch of boasting fisherman all having a good laugh about the stupidity of these foreigners. When he staggered home he dutifully handed over his paycheck to his wife being careful to conceal the vomit stains on his blue blazer after having upchucked his saké and sashimi on the JR Line; this is not an uncommon sight on the Tōkyō trains in the evenings. His incredulity seemed unshakable but I was still determined not to become one of Suzuki’s foreign fish stories.
To my shock I noticed I was still carrying a phone card I had purchased in Tōkyō, tucked away in a flap with my phone list, that had its electromagnetic strip hacked into. These could be purchased in certain neighbourhoods from Iranian street vendors. I thought I had gotten rid of my illegal phone cards and as I tried to conceal it the foil strip, that replaced the electromagnetic one, must have briefly caught a ray of light and reflected back into Suzuki’s eyes that were now fixed on my wallet.
“May I see your wallet please?” I handed it over still clutching the stack of cards that concealed the phone card.
“Those cards in your hand please.” “So you a bad foreigner. Very bad foreigner.” He was fanning the card now and continued remonstrating with me as if I were a child. He called in a co-worker and got him in on the fun. Now Suzuki was in his glory. He toyed with me and threatened arrest while his buddy stood there making the motions of being handcuffed, laughing like a hick. They began speaking to each other in Japanese. Suzuki then picked up the phone and started to make a call. I pleaded with him not to call my girlfriend’s mother because we had been living together secretly and it would shame her to discover this and bring unnecessary problems in their family. He brushed this off as if it were no concern of his.
I sat there helplessly waiting, not knowing who he might be calling, hoping that whoever took the call would be alert, lie convincingly and help me get through this situation. Just to keep things comfortable for me he decided to speak in Japanese. I glanced up at the supporting cast who saw me looking so he taunted me again making like he was being handcuffed and smiling that idiot grin of his. I was having serious doubts about the reputable hospitality of the Japanese. These two just couldn’t help making it personal and, feeling as though it was somehow over for me, I considered my options for a getaway. It didn’t look very good. If I was able to hurdle the counter at immigration, with the staff in hot pursuit, it’s not likely I’d get past the bottleneck at customs. I’d have to snatch the plastic envelope off the desk otherwise I’d never get out of the country. This left me feeling like I should do something. I asked to know who he was calling. Without looking at me he pointed to my girlfriends mothers name. I’d wish I’d stayed in Bangkok.
My bizarre arrival in Thailand turned tense when I stepped off the bus and followed my directions down an alley which took a sharp left turn, narrowed and darkened, then took a sharp right turn and narrowed and darkened further so that all that I could make out was a vast dark courtyard reeking of fermented sewage. Somewhere back in the stinking dark was the guesthouse I had been directed to. Everything was locked up, it was two o’clock in the morning, and as I turned around to go back to the street I knocked something over with my duffle bag sending a squealing panic through a pack of rats that were dining on something close by. Running over each other trying to duck for cover one rat headed towards the opening directly behind me. After a bowel slackening split second of fear I hopped up on a rise of concrete and watched a rat the size of my arm below the elbow race by. I decided quickly that it would be best to wait the night out in one of the bars on the main drag.
I sat down at the end of the bar, in Buddy Beer, one of half dozen open air bars crowding less than a block of Kaosan Rd. Standing on the street the pumping music blended into a collage of Classic-Metal-Techno-Soft-Rock which, when heard individually would have been annoyingly inappropriate with the scene in the street, turning the moment into a beer commercial, but listened to simultaneously matched its frenzy perfectly. This was a place where the naive or the careless newcomer get robbed. Here in the bar I wondered how long it would take me to get marked, for someone to come across and make their play, or attempt some kind of con.
It was almost three o’clock and the street was still crawling with cars, fruit vendors, tuk-tuk drivers and pedestrians. The ceiling fans did little to cool the humid night heat. The young women working in the bar eyed the remaining few drunkards coldly. A girl no older than thirteen cleared the tables dodging passes from the foreigners. A drunken German weaved up to the bar and gurgled some incomprehensible noises by way of conversation. All I could make out was beutfl weemen’ followed by an expansive gesture with his arm that through him off balance. This guy wasn’t conscious enough to pull anything. I was feeling pretty conspicuous lugging my duffle bag to and from the washroom.
When I left Tōkyō the temperature had begun to drop into the low teens. I was overdressed for the heat now and sweating heavily. The coffee wasn’t helping with body heat matters. A group of prostitutes came into the bar each accompanied by a hip young stud in baggy shorts and sandals. One blonde haired Adonis was talking intently to one woman all the time eyeballing me at the bar. She turned around and gave me a slow look as her mouth gradually broadened from a smirk to smile. She was a little older than the other girls and her figure was fuller and more womanly. She wore an ultra low skirt which showed off finely shaped brown legs. When she saw me looking she wasted no time in coming over. Her student stud positioned himself at the other end of the bar pretending not to be interested. I was almost talked into going with her if it hadn’t been for the heavy odor of stale sex coming off of her and her continued glances over at recent fuck-boy. It looked like a set-up although her hand was doing some effective bargaining below the bar. While her fingers dexterously worked away she told me she was from Laos and had come to Bangkok to earn money prostituting some of which she sent home to support her family. Her price was ฿1500 and she was anxious to close the deal because she was here to eat a late meal turn one more trick and then call it a night. I wasn’t really interested but was enjoying the seedy encounter nevertheless. I negotiated the price down to ฿500. The drunk German had seated himself, after a considerable effort, at the bar and watched the encounter between her and I, winking when our eyes met. After inhaling a plate of bloody eggs and toast she lost interest in me and turned to her Shultz. After some discussion they went off together. Blonde-boy guzzeled his beer and followed them out.
I was brought back to my senses by Suzuki’s sudden fit of activity.
Suzuki’s sudden burst of determination broke me out of my Thailand reverie. “Not only you a bad foreigner,” he said as he swiveled back around from his filing cabinets with a handful of forms, “you a liar!” He seemed to be taking it all a bit too personally and calling me a liar was out of line since I hadn’t yet been asked the obvious question, whether I had worked illegally or not in Tōkyō. And there was no way he could have figured out my lie about Ōsaka with one phone call.
“What did she say?” No answer. He busied himself imposing some order upon a stack of faded official photocopied documents.
“I have a right to know what is happening to me.” Smirking to himself he replied. “I am sending you back to Canada.” It was over. Checkmate. Devious Japanese civil servant takes desperate Canadian tourist. Not knowing what to say I did what any desperate man would do: I begged. I begged for time. Nope. I begged to be allowed to return to my apartment to put some things in order. No way. I begged for a phone call. Surprisingly it was granted. All I could think about was my girlfriend so I called our apartment to tell her the sad news but she wasn’t there.
As I hung up the phone Suzuki was ready for my signature. His expedience was impressive but he knew he had me from the start. If the possession of the contents of my journal wasn’t enough to bust me on then the hacked phone card was. Stunned, I mechanically began to sign the papers. The voice of someone I didn’t particularly like echoed in my ears: ‘He’ll be back in three months,’ and I made a mental note not to talk to him again. I was making my last big mistake here because I wasn’t even paying attention to what I was signing. Later I would learn that I had signed away my right to appeal but at the time all I could feel was a sense of defeat and humiliation not unlike the time I was threatened with expulsion by a professor I admired on the semifinal senior basketball game when after I ran out the last ten seconds of the clock confused, thinking we were ahead by a point when actually we were behind a point.
I was led back to the waiting room. Twice as many people were there now. The day’s catch. More arrived as I was left to wait for an hour or more. I managed another phone call but still couldn’t reach her. My depression deepened. Someone tried striking up a conversation but I wasn’t interested. I was told there wasn’t a flight out that day so I was to be moved to a larger holding area until the first available one the next day. I scanned the room for the first time and saw a deep sense of dejection and fear everywhere. Most of these people would become cellmates later as we waited for our departures out of Japan, but we would speak little even then, all of us turned cold to the other’s anguish, selfishly cradling our private miseries and contempt. My mind raced through images of my girlfriend sitting alone in our apartment crying, wearing a shirt of mine to comfort her, my private students, confused about my sudden disappearance, feeling betrayed by yet another foreigner, my various employers angry that I did not return as promised and lastly to the people I knew back home who I would eventually have to face and relate yet another failure in what seemed like a life revolving around taking long shots at the slightest opportunity and missing. I watched half a dozen people leave to confront Suzuki, their last station in the day’s deportation odyssey, returning with their heads bowed. Defeated.
This cold efficiency in the handling of humans beings, the systematic assessment of desirability and its eventual shattering of hope cast a morbid shadow. My mind’s eye reshaping the scene, distressing it completely, to a remote outpost at some less traveled border crossing waiting for my entry to be approved. My name is called and I am led out under armed guard. I am hearing the voices of the teenage soldiers in broken English admiring my running shoes, ‘Converse cool’, as I am walked out to a field. Told to kneel down one of my teenage executioners is saying something, demanding money, his chubby well fed face…
“You must pay $300 for one night.” I was sitting now in the offices of a private security company that is responsible for handling deportees after customs and immigration are finished with your processing, my death-trip daydream interrupted by an overstuffed, uniformed man whose fat face bulged out from his tight collar looking absurdly large under his tiny blue hat. I was being coerced into paying for my own confinement. “No I won’t do that.” Not really being convinced of the effectiveness of a defiant stand at this stage I was nevertheless fucked if I would pay for the right to spend a night in jail. It was half past three and I had been detained since my arrival at one. Things weren’t looking very good for me. The chances of getting back into Japan seemed pretty slim. It occurred to me that matters had rushed along and I hadn’t exactly presented any strong opposition so, without having much to lose, I began to stall the proceedings.
“I want to speak to someone from the Canadian Embassy!” His previous look of disbelief returned. The Japanese are not known for dealing well with confrontational behavior.
“There is no point. Give up. It is over.” I barely heard him. I decided not to say or do anything until I spoke to someone from the consulate. I leaned back in my chair and lit a cigarette. “This is extortion. I want to speak to someone from the embassy.” I was beginning to enjoy myself. The stooge left the room. I would just have to keep agitating and refusing until my demands were met. I was a Canadian citizen being shaken down by foreign officials! So as I waited for a Canadian representative I tried to relax as best as I could. I remembered how in Bangkok my day would start with a traditional Thai massage in the lobby of the guest house I eventually stayed in. A beautiful Thai girl firmly caressing my sore neck and shoulders, her strong hands deftly drawing out any pain or tension in my muscles. Now I had wished I made Bangkok my original destination, not Tōkyō, and vowed that if I somehow got out of this mess I would relocate there as quickly as possible.
Nobody from the embassy ever arrived nor was I allowed to use the phone again. After three hours of pleading, yelling, and pounding the table my stall tactics were becoming hard to justify. It was almost 8 pm and doubtful that anyone would be at the embassy even if I was granted a phone call. So finally, after being threatened with arrest over the illegal phone card, I paid and spent the night in jail with about two dozen other people who were also refused entry into Japan that day. If this was an average daily catch of illegal aliens then the annual revenues in this profitable trade exceeded two million dollars. Perhaps the final indignity was to discover that my connecting flight from LAX hadn’t been arranged at all.
So now I am barred from Japan for a year and will be scrutinized carefully even if I chose to go back in the future.
Back in Vancouver I was relating my story to some friends saying that I was particularly bummed because, had I gotten back in, I could have watched some of the Olympics live that winter in Nagano.
“But the Winter Olympics aren’t until 1998,” someone pointed out. I guess I never was good at lying.
PROLOGUE:
Chuck Blade had this letter slipped under his door in Japan. Author unknown.
I’m very sorry to come here this time too. I’m very sorry to enter this letter to the post. I wanted to talk the next matters. I had said a few days ago my heart is chrischan. It’s meaning is the next. My heart and my idea resemble to the reliegeon of the Christ. And… I’m very busy now and I have no leisure of going to the church. By the way… other topics of mine… I had written the story of the end of the Japanese alient kingdom’s story. I had written the story by my all soul and if everyone would utelize the story unless telling to me about the matters, very bad destiny would come. By the way I think to the next. Everybody exist in this place, I can live. Thank you… I’ll present the story about the Peter Pan (other story)… (a little)… Peter Pan was a fairly of the music in the leaves. In the world of the imagenation I became to the fairly of the water and I talked to him. On the other hand Peter Pan had had the friend with Donald Dack and sleeping queen.
Chuck Blade sold his ten year old pair of Converse to a second hand clothing store in Tōkyō for ¥12,000.
He spins a good story, much better written than CJ’s prose.
@Greg2: Honesty always helps the telling of a story. This is true even in fiction; what I’ve read of Siamese Dreams illustrates this.
I love these lines, “hugh, gaudy, Barnum & Baily paintings of the proud king lit with flood lights beaming arrogantly into the night into the surrounding darkness”
I’ve never seen them that way, I always considered them gaudy but the B&B reference was pretty clever. They really do resemble those old canvas portraits of strong men etc… Lucky for him he used a pen name and he wont be denied entry to Thailand for insulting the king.
Strange he didn’t have a visa, he’s obviously an educated man and mentions a professor. He only had to walk into a chain school back then and would of easily secured a visa. Maybe he dropped out of college for some adventure.
So Siamese Dream was a bit if a stinker? Was he just slamming thai culture?
@Greg2:
So Siamese Dream was a bit if a stinker? Was he just slamming thai culture?
No, he wasn’t. He obeys standard white guy orientalism. One never slams “Thailand” as a whole in the way Johnson slams “Japan”. Thailand may genuinely have corruption, (often draconian) limits to free speech, severe urban pollution, military rule, and violent repression of minorities but it also has cool beaches, seemingly available women and a good life for dollar- or Euro-laden westerners. It’s a place tedious novel-writing ex-pats can make pretty myths about without anyone complaining.
Not that I’m slagging Thailand; I’m just pointing out the absurdity of Johnson’s criticisms of “Japan”.
The thing is, some white people really seem to struggle with a wealthy society where their own kind generally don’t hold the whip hand in one way or another (interestingly, this cuts across the political spectrum). It appears that Johnson was refused entry because he was an illegal economic immigrant. That’s really got his back up about “Japan”. It comes out in the various references in his original article to white educated males deserving preferential treatment.
@Eido Inoue: Excellent story, Eido. This story, along with other stories of deportation and exclusion from FG, really illuminates the gap between Johnson’s account and what actually happened (as well as the gap between better writing and much, much worse).
I said this on the Economist thread, but I’ll repeat it here. Johnson never, ever, ever takes any responsibility for anything that has happened to him. I don’t know his background, but his behaviour screams privilege.
Hi,everyone
I’ve been following this thread with interest. Western Canada has inflicted more than its fair share of rice kings on the land of the rising sun. I have met so many in Vancouver alone. VK, no surprise to me Mr. Indignant White Privilege is a born and bred Alberta boy. Alberta is the Texas of Canada.
@VK: I see, now I’m a bit curious to read it…Whoa! Wait a minute, was this an elaborate PR/social media scheme to get his name to get his name out into the news and blawgosphere to sell a few books? I feel so duped.
I guess it worked, every body was talking about him.
I’m sure it was just happenstance that worked in his favor for a bit of PR.
@Greg2: Alas, the extensive google books preview appears to be no longer available since I quoted from it last.
I think Mr Johnson has been reading this site.
It’s tempting to buy it, and do a review of it a la In Appropriate. I had a look through a few pages, and there were odd bits on quite a few – actually enjoyably bad.
Did you not see the extensive reviews from major publications he claimed for the book on his website? Bloomberg and The Scotsman have both reviewed it, apparently. They’re pretty glowing, and pretty absent from those publications’ own websites.
I guess this is old news by now, but the pride of Alberta has changed the title of his ever-changing story from Gaijin “Gulag” to Gaijin “Dungeon” on his website. At this rate, will there be any unaltered original material left in his story at all?
Just flew out of Narita this weekend and actually saw a bunch of G.A.S. rent-a-cops. Looked like they were waiting to do the security search on a Korean Airlines plane.
Nobody seemed to be packing heat, though.
Also three immigration officers seeing off an Aeroflot flight.
@iago:
It funny to think that the way CJ operates, that any time someone provides info, he will use it to change his story.
Being unable to come to Japan must make him desperate for such scraps of info to plug the holes in his story. Wonder if he’s been doing desperate google searches for images of visa paperwork so he can add some detail to his claims.
Speaking of detail. Here’s a pop quiz for CJ only.
What is the shape of the red stamp in a passport showing a visa application has started?
1. Square
2. Rectangular
3. Circular
4. Oval
5. Square with cut corners.
6. Square with rounded corners.
7. Rectangular with cut corners.
8. Rectangular with rounded corners.
9. Other (explain)
10. Trick question, the stamp isn’t red.
No hints anyone.
@iago: I’m off through Narita in a couple of hours (typing this in the Itami ANA lounge), so I’ll be on the lookout for that too!
@Level3:
Ooh – I know this one! I have an active application in my passport at the moment and guess what: when I arrived back at NRT this weekend there were no problems on gaining re-entry, might have something to do with me having a valid re-entry permit.
Also, they scanned my documents and fingerprints etc in exactly the same order as every time before (not to give him any any clues on the real procedure), but it is strange how when friend CJ approached they used an entirely different and abnormal procedure for him
I guess observation skills and memory aren’t so important in journalists these days.
@Nogbad:
Well, it’s understandable he can’t remember many details beyond what people have told him afterward. He did claim to have had “a few beers” on the 90 minute flight from Seoul, and that he was in a state of “delirium” due to “sleep deprivation”.. and most surely not due to being a bit tipsy and hazy before noon.
It’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.
(No sleep + booze – oxygen + ego = not-so-reliable witness)
You know he probably could still get away with some of this if he just said he acted like he did (just how far do you have to push to make a cop remind you why he carries a gun?) because he was drunk, whether it be true or not. Japanese can be amazingly forgiving (or at least pretend to be) on that point as long as it doesn’t involve any crime… oh, wait…
(Anyway, that should be in the REAL Top 10 list of good things about Japan!)