Update! Peeper edition

[parasitegirl]

Dean Mommy is unsure what is the most disturbing aspect of my form student situation, but she appreciates the updates.

 

There is so much I find absurd about all of this.

 

This is a small world. Was I really surprised to find a former student at my door and abvoe my abode? I wish I could say it boggled my mind, but my world is too small to claim that. I mark the dinner with Wataguy when we realized that prior to meeting me he had slept with the ONLY girl living in Japan I’d known from back home as the point at which I just said “These coincidences happen to me, they just do.”…that prepared me for the time in Narita International Airport when two former students  searched my luggage. They had also not recognized me until I asked them if they had graduated from Matsu-koku.

 

This is not the first updoor neighbor at this location that I have contacted authorities about, although last time I contacted the apartment rental agency, because they’d woken me up at 2AM. My prior upstairs guy was a crazy old man. He’ woken me from a dead sleep insisting he’d heard gunshots from my apartment. He also patroleld the apartment complex at night shining flashlights at windows, staring at doors, and becoming angry when people asked him WTF?!

 

I am used to people not recognizing me. It is perfectly normal for many of my fellow dancers to not recognize old pictures of me, or have problems identifying me in/out of make-up. On a recent train ride home from an event I found myself talking to a dancer I’ve known for years. She was wondering why she couldn’t remember me if I was peers with Anaan and Eshe in the Alegra days. I finally had to say “you remember Kayt?” “Yeah…what happened to her?” “Dude, I’m her, you’ve known me for YEARS!”

 

So, our updates:

 

Mr. Sakamoto and his partner dropped by my place around 6PM while I was cleaning. They were on patrol, in plaincloths, and wanted to talk to me about moving. They also, it seems, wanted to…search my apartment for peepholes and possible small cables with tiny cameras snaked into my apartment. This was weird. When, leaving work, a janitor helped remove bikes blocking my bike and then told me he knew I worked on the second floro because he remembers beautiful women, I thought that would be the wierdest moment of the day…I was wrong.

 

The officers also took high tech celphone photos of my former student’s yearbook picture…and passed my old yearbook picture back and forth and said, yeah, they might not have known it was me. They also asked if my mom worries about me. They didn’t comment on the costume table.

 

The police bristle at the idea that some backwards ideas about “gaijin girls” might be an issue at hand and yet they waxed on a bit about Japanese pervert technology.

 

I think they are over reacting in a few ways. This should be the point where we stay vigilant and see if anything else happens, but also get on with our lives…it’s not the time when we start screaming “MOVE! MOVE! OMG! ARE YOU OK?” but I realize that they are where I was a week ago. A week ago they thought I might be wrong in it being a student, or if it was a student that I was wrong about it being a coinsidence because I must be crazy to think my gaijin appearance has changed enough to befuddle Japanese eyes.

 

My supervisor thinks the police officer might be attracted to me. My supervisor wanted to make sure the calls from the police to my cel were not being made from the oficer7s private celphone…and joked/grilled him a bit on the phone.

 

The officer IS a little sweet on me but I don’t think that is the prime motivation for the extent of the reaction and the fact I am being discussed down at the station/being fretted over. I think the biggest reason for the level of this reaction is that when they look at me, they see Lindsay Hawker. Lindsay Hawker was a British girl working at an English Conversation school in the Tokyo area. She was brutally beaten and murdered in 2007 and it took the police two years to capture her killer, despite knowing exactly who he was.

 

I suspect that it is because of Lindsay Hawker that the police want me to move, to remove this tension, this fear that they will be the center of Japan’s next international “police fail” scrutiny. This is why I am so high on the radar. I wonder if they will calm down or with continue to push for a move.

 

Monday I will being my apartment contracts to work to see what sort of cost it would be to lave this place…much less look at another location. Kazu is also on duty. He knows I may be tapping him for a weekend or two of apartment hunting. I’d need something as nice as I have now and probably closer to a major train stop (so I can use the express) to motivate me to make the move. I am not desperate for time and cash like I was in the last move, but I don’t want a needless financial drain.

 

That’s the latest.

Comments

[yndy.livejournal.com]

Ah see now... "Lindsay Hawker" was on the radar for those of us in the states. That makes the reaction a little more understandable.

That you are the nexus of many such weird connections? Not a surprise from here. Some of us just lead weird lives like that. I befriended someone I swore I "knew" but couldn't figure out where from. Friends told me I was mistaken and she must just have 'one of those faces.' A year and a half later, a chance conversation at a conference cued us in to the fact that we had known each other 15 years previously. Yes, time changed us both that much. We "met" in San Francisco (not my home town) 15 years afterwards. Some of us have lives like that. You are one.

In hindsight? Old guy who used to try to look in your windows for intruders seems harmless compared to ex-student.

Maybe this is the universe telling you that there's a better place waiting for you. Hopefully you and Kazu find it! :)

Home needs to feel safe

[(Anonymous)]

I can appreciate the resistance to the major inconvenience of moving and I think that your analysis of the police reactions makes lots of sense. However, the key issue is whether you can return to feeling safe living in this complex. I am happy to help with any move that helps you have confidence in the safety of your housing.
Dean Mommy

Re: Home needs to feel safe

[parasitegirl.livejournal.com]

I don't feel at risk, but I do feel a nagging of "what new annoyance is next here?"

I am looking into new apartments, but not in desperation. I should have time to see a bunch. I also think that I could finally be free of tatami mats (which compound my allergy issues) if I move.