March 11, 2004
Break-In
Just after I started writing this blog, there was a large fire in my neighbourhood. Megumi was in the early stages of pregnancy, so it was a worrying period for both of us. Fortunately for us, the fire did not reach our house, and while our neighbours have had a hard time rebuilding their lives, they all have places to live, and have put their lives back together, one way or another.
Another bit of bad news in the vicinity of our house. 2 days ago, our next-door neighbours' house was broken into. One of the 2 sisters next-door is getting married in Italy, so they are all out of the country at the wedding. They will come back to a ransacked house. We didn't hear anything, but it appears as though the glass on the back door was broken by the burglar. Our house is in a very quiet, peaceful area, so it is a little unnerving to think of some piece of scum watching the house, staking it out and then pouncing when they were away. If the same thing happened to us, even if we didn't lose much of value, I know Megumi would be upset at the invasion of privacy, and I'm sure our neighbours will be as well (they have a 4-year old daughter).
As an aside, Japanese families tend to keep foolishly large amounts of cash in the house, and it is not uncommon for a house burglary to yield 5 million or 10 million yen. Hopefully our neighbours used the bank...
Some old data about the rise in burglary in Japan.
Viewpoint from a comparisons of burglaries in Japan and the Netherlands:
In Japan one out of four burglars tries to get into the house by climbing to the balcony. The most popular entrances of the dwellings however are the front door and one of the windows. In each case 31% tries to break into the house by using one of these apertures in the facade.
The working method to gain access to the house is straight forward in Japan: 40% enters the dwelling by breaking a window-pane, 31% simply walks into the house through an open door or window, and 11% finds and uses the key that was hidden by the occupants.
(More on crime in Japan, borrowed from Terrie.com)
In true Japanese fashion, there is a whole media fixation growing up around people's fears of burglary. For example, did you know that the proper etiquette for preventing burglars from trashing your apartment is to leave between JPY10,000 to JPY30,000 in "Welcome Money" (we made that term up) to encourage them to get on with the job and leave? Apparently in this last few months there have been a rash of burglaries in Kanagawa into single women's apartments. When the intruder finds little or no cash, they mess the place up, including even peeing on the bed. Accordingly, young women's web sites are saying that JPY10,000 may not be enough to prevent such actions -- so JPY30,000 is considered to be the right amount... Only in Japan!
Just a follow-up. The neighbours have returned - they had no money in the house, and had their credit cards and passports with them on vacation, so are relatively unscathed.
Our landlady has put bars on the windows(!), is installing a light, and we are trying to get the big dog who used to live next door back to protect the area!
Posted by: Gary at March 15, 2004 11:45 AMI would rather have someone break in and trash the place than have to live with bars on the windows. Of course, I don't have a baby to protect... Though I can bet that any asshole that would trash the place and pee on the bed would also not be so friendly to my birds.
As for keeping foolish amounts of money, I recently had a suitcase filled with loose change that had over $5,000 in it. Of course the rober would have to have a car there to get away. I had to break it down into four trips to the bank because it was so heavy.
Posted by: kevin at March 17, 2004 10:19 AM