That Time I Was Blackmailed in Japan
Car crashes, yakuza wannabes and surly police.
The Car Crash
This happened in my first year working in Japan. Now I’m in my 11th year, so I did in fact survive.
I was up north living in Aomori prefecture. It was winter, bleak and beautiful all at once.
Being a peninsula, where I lived was ravaged by icy ocean winds and currents from Siberia. But I grew up in a snowy Californian mountain town, so I thought I could handle it.
I went on a date the night of my near demise. She was a Facebook friend of a friend that I messaged out of nowhere. She brought 2 of her friends and it turned out to be an awesome time just talking, if lacking in the romantic vibe.
I had only 2 weak cocktails that night because I knew I would be driving home later. Had this been in the States, there would’ve been no problem since I was well under the blood alcohol limit; Japan is another story with a near zero tolerance and this did come back to bite me later.
On my way home I had to go through a forest. Where I lived was separated from the town my date was in by about a 20 minute drive. Between the two points were a few hamlets scattered between deep alpine forest roads.
The roads were serpentine and wild. There was a slick layer of ice already encasing them, so slippery it was hard to even walk without falling. But I was used to these conditions. My first time ever driving a car was at age 15 and it was dumping snow.
That hubris was my downfall.
I hit a “S” shaped curve. The first bend went ok. I was driving a bit faster than wisdom would’ve liked me to, but no problems so far.
The last curve was a near death sentence. I felt my back tires slide to my left, the nose to the right, and then I started fishtailing. I tried to correct the wheel to no avail. The car began spinning in circles as I let go of the wheel, knowing it was pointless, and offered up a prayer as my potential last words alongside f#$k as an amen.
The car flew off the road and smashed right into a tree. I know what airbag burns feel like now as the cushion slammed into my face. My right wrist jammed against the dashboard.
The car was balanced half off the road, half on, like a seesaw. The two back tires exploded into rubbery carnage. My windshield was gone. The entire front bent in two.
I had to get out of the car since it was in such a precarious position and could tilt over the slight berm it was resting on and fall further down into a drop. It was freezing outside. My breath wrapped around me like ghosts of so many who weren’t as lucky as I when faced with similar accidents.
The Yakuza Hero
I couldn’t stay in my car, that was a given. I was also in the middle of the woods, not even a house light in sight. Even worse, I had a few drinks, and in Japan, any slight amount of drinking and driving means automatic arrest and/or possible deportation.
I was standing outside in sub-zero weather at 1AM, scared and unsure of what to do. I couldn’t call an ambulance or tow truck because that would automatically involve the police. After about 10 minutes a car drove past and ignored me. I wasn’t sure if I felt relieved, hopeless or angry at that.
Another 20 minutes goes by and another truck comes near, but this time it stops. A guy comes out and immediately says “Daijoubu ka!?” (you ok!?). He comes over to me and the first thing I notice is the reek of cheap liquor, he was wasted.
The second thing I noticed were the tattoos from his knuckles going up his arms to his neck. In Japan, in the deep countryside where I lived especially, tattoos are always seen as belonging to criminals like the yakuza or just bad people in general.
I have no such belief but the fact that this guy had such brazen tattoos meant he really didn’t give a fuck about what literally every person around him thought about it. Tattoos are so serious here that they can lose you job opportunities, bar you from hot springs and scare granny into an early grave.
He had a friend that stayed in the truck. A large brick faced man twice my size in construction workers overalls.
Despite the shadiness the tattooed guy was friendly. He assessed the shit situation of my car and called some of his friends to come drive out and meet us. A low rider sports car with neon green lights showed up. The guy that came out was in a bright red track suit with bleached blonde hair.
He brought cables and they hooked my car up to the low rider and pulled it out of the ditch. Tattoo guy drove my car home despite not having two tires. The crazy ice and the fact that the rest of the way was downhill probably helped him to achieve the impossible.
I rode shotty with the brick faced man in silence so uncomfortable I felt needles going into my eyes.
We got to my apartment, put my car in the spot and they bade me farewell. Tattoo guy said something to me I didn’t understand, well I didn’t understand much at the time being my first year in country and the fact that people in Aomori speak a heavy dialect even Tokyoites don’t understand.
I was shaking when I got into my room but oh so thankful that I was alive, and that these random guys helped me get home without legal issues.
The Blackmail
The next morning I saw my car in clear daylight. Weeds were jammed into every crevice and I’m sure my neighbors were like “the hell happened here?”
The car was a rental through the company I worked at so I called their insurance people, they came and got my car and sent it to a garage to get fixed without asking any questions.
I thought it was all behind me until lunch time that day. I get a call from my company saying:
“Umm Shawn, we just got a call from your school. They said some guy called them talking about you. He said he saved ‘their foreigner’ from an accident last night because he was wasted. He said that you owe him money for towing your car or else he’ll call the police.”
My heart dropped to the core of the earth. Instead of magma, it found an icy river of Styx to welcome it.
Apparently the thing that tattoo guy said to me when he dropped me off was “My buddy has a tow garage he owns, send your car to his place and have your insurance pay him as a way to show gratitude for us helping you.”
That completely went over my head at the time. He did call me that morning but I let it go thinking I could always call him back later….later had come with a vengeance.
My boss flew up from Tokyo the next day to help settle the matter. I was full of shame, embarrassment, anger. My boss, lets call him Shoji, was incredibly nice. It may have all been a “face” of extreme politeness, but he never once said a harsh word to me and that meant the world at the time.
He said we had to go into spy mode. Our mission was
Tell the police what happened so the blackmail would lose its power.
Meet the tattoo guy and secretly record the conversation, the company would pay him for what he thought he was owed and the matter would be done.
Repair my reputation with the school I was contracted to.
My goal: survive the storm of embarrassment that was sure to come.
The Pissed off Police Officer
We left my new rental car at my school (important fact for later) and my boss drove me to the police station.
We stepped inside, my spine glued to my feet. The officer we spoke with was very friendly, at first. Shoji was saying how I got into this accident, and we were very sorry for not reporting it earlier. The officer showed genuine concern, asking if I was ok.
Then Shoji brought up the explosive fact that I may have had a few drinks that night.
Never before have I seen a man’s smile evaporate so fast. He started reaming Shoji out furiously. The officer’s Aomori dialect was so thick that Shoji meekly said “sorry I can’t understand you” which further enraged the man.
He kept pinning Shoji like a moth to a board.
“Why didn’t you make sure this wouldn’t happen? You are responsible for this foreigner. You are the one who is at fault.”
I was the one who did the deed, yet the blame was being fired at the wrong person.
The officer put on his cap and said “sa ikimashouka?” (well then, shall we go?).
He took us to the garage where my damaged car was and took a few dozen photos.
Then we drove to the scene of the accident in the middle of a snow storm. We spent 2 hours outside and I had to reenact everything that happened and try to pinpoint the exact tree that I had hit.
Then they needed my car’s registration, which was left inside my other car at I had left at school. So Shoji and I, and 2 squad cars with their lights on roll up into the school’s parking lot.
The timing was horrible. Had we got there 20 minutes earlier we could have escaped notice. As it was, ALL of my co-workers, who until then knew nothing of what had happened, SAW me with police looking inside my car. The gossip lit up like an oil fire I’m sure.
After checking everything, 7 HOURS after we had initially gone to the police, the officer came to me and said “well there’s no evidence of anything so you can go, the issue is closed.”
I’m sure that was the intention all along, to not charge me with anything but to scare me straight.
The Cafeteria Spy
Shoji and I were exhausted. Poor Shoji, a decent hardworking man who still was still putting on an indominable smile, he said “lets eat something before we meet tattoo guy.”
We got some ramen from a tin hut of a restaurant, holes in the wall exposing us to the winter winds coming in from the sea. We ate in silence and tried to relax after our hellish ordeal. At least the police now knew everything so the blackmail was useless, now we just had to deal with tattoo guy.
We were eating ramen in the seaside village he was from, waiting for him to show up and do the deal.
He calls Shoji saying “idiot, I’m not there I’m in the city at Gusto (think Denny’s)”.
He definitely told us to meet in the village so either he had brain damage or he was fucking with us. Now we had to make the 40 minute drive in a blizzard to go meet him at the new spot.
On the way there an oncoming car swerved into our lane and would have hit us had Shoji not been paying attention and dove into the opposite lane. We were having a grand time.
Get to Gusto and my friend’s girlfriend sees me and tries to call me over to say hi. I meekly wave at her and don’t go over because I’m on a life or death mission.
Shoji and I sit down at a booth and wait for tattoo guy. We turned on a voice recorder and hid it under the table just to make sure everything was on record. The company didn’t have to pay him, there was no legal reason to do so and he had no more power with the blackmail.
However, being a small area and he being a guy with connections and an obvious willingness to burn the world down (remember he was disastrously drunk himself the night that he was driving and saved me, so he would’ve gone down too), he wasn’t someone I wanted holding a grudge against me.
He comes in dripping with don’t give a shit swag. He slumps down into our booth and kicks his feet up on the table.
“So what are you going to do about my trouble?” he squarely launches his question at Shoji.
Shoji then goes through a long apology, wanting to make amends for the misunderstanding and offers him some money (the same amount his garage buddy would have gotten paid).
Then tattoo guy says something I wholly did not expect.
“I won’t take the money unless you promise me that Shawn won’t get fired or deported.”
That shocked me. I mean, it was this fuckers fault that this situation turned into the pseudo espionage and bribery episode that it did and now he’s saying he’s worried about me?
Shoji leaves to call his superiors to tell them the matter has been settled.
That left me alone with the tattoo guy. He leans forward and softly, with a smile, says “I’m sorry it came to this, I just wanted to get what I thought I deserved, I hope nothing bad happens to you and I’ll throw the money in his face if yo get fired.”
I don’t know if I can take what he said at face value, nevertheless it was at least good to hear that.
Shoji comes back in, tattoo guy leaves, and everyone goes to bed, the matter has been buried.
I hadn’t even been in Japan one year and already had a brush with death, mass embarrassment, shady characters, the law, had my boss thoroughly run through. Somehow it didn’t destroy my life here but gave it an interesting and sober start.