Holy HELLS
Mar. 25th, 2005 04:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI've written about fourteen 8pt pages of lj entries today at work, about various subjects - Japanese toothpaste, high school graduation and closing ceremonies, my supervisors, why I only got two hours of sleep last night, and so forth, but those have all been put on standby because oh my god.
Last December, a kid in my neighborhood got a phone call one afternoon. "Hi, this is Tanaka at the Board of Education at City Hall. We're currently holding the intra-city meeting to plan the third term, but the student enrollment records have been forgotten to be brought." (Yes, Japanese really does phrase things this way.)
The caller continued, "We have a version of them here, but we aren't certain how up-to-date it is. Can I check some things with you?"
"Okay," said the student.
"Are you [student's name], living at [student's address], with the phone number [student's phone number]?
"Yes," said the student.
The caller then asked about the student's school, homeroom, and student number. His information was correct.
"Okay, is your younger brother [brother's name] a student at Shimizu elementary?"
"Yes."
"And does your father work at [company name]?"
"Yes."
The caller then proceeded to reel off the names, addresses, and phone numbers of several other students, which the student in question corroborated.
"And is Machida Keisuke in Grade 2, Homeroom 5, with the student number 14?"
"No," said the student. "There's no Machida Keisuke there. Do you mean Matsuda Keisuke?" She gave the caller the correct information, which one assumes he made note of.
At this point, the student's mother returned, and the student handed the phone to her. Tanaka-san at the city hall hung up. The mother called our school to ask about this phone call.
Of course, there was no Tanaka-san at the intra-city planning meeting for third term, which was well under way with a complete and up-to-date set of enrollment records. The fact that the mystery caller, who was most likely not associated with city hall in any way, still had mostly accurate information on a whole bunch of students, was pretty frightening.
Throughout the day, 'Tanaka-san' called at least two other people, most likely to try the same stunt, but hung up when the kids went to put their parents on the phone.
Then nothing happened for three months, except a lot of general overreaction to every strange occurrence. (To illustrate: two men in a car with Niigata plates pulled up to a couple of elementary school girls and asked them if they were on the right road to the station. The kids told their homeroom teachers, which resulted in all the students at my school being sent home three hours early for safety's sake.)
Well, today we might have seen the ultimate purpose of Tanaka-san's calls. One of my favorite 2nd year students was hustled into the staff room today. Today is the day, incidentally, when all city personnel are transferred to new jobs, and we were right in the middle of that when she was brought into the staff room. City hall immediately stopped issuing the transfer orders.
Now, nothing under the sun is more important than those transfer orders, so this was BIG.
What had happened? Her mother had received a phone call from someone claiming to have her daughter in their possession, and demanding that she transfer a very large amount of money into a their bank account if she didn't want her kid dead. Luckily, the mother did the sensible thing, which was to agree to the caller's demands, hang up, call the cops, and then call the school to make sure her kid really was missing.
Well, her kid wasn't missing. (And interesting side note: my l33t 1kyuu skills allow me to easily call to mind three words meaning 'to kidnap.' As it was described to me, the caller above did not use any of them, but instead said that he had 'entrusted himself' with the woman's daughter, which is so perfectly Japanese in a really horrible way.)
First, we had to round up all the teachers getting their reassignments, in the bathrooms crying, or being comforted by the school counselor, and then begin the huge task of rounding up all 800 kids from their various club practices and herding them into the gym in order to make sure they were all accounted for.
As we were doing this, another parent got a call by someone making the same threat. This parent also did the sensible thing and called the cops, who immediately called us, not only to inform us about the 2nd call, but because they'd done some investigation into the account number the 'kidnappers' had given, and it's a bank account associated with THE FREAKING YAKUZA, which makes these phone calls 100% more serious.
After that, work transfers were put on hold while every staff member in the school called each of the families of our 800 students to inform them about the call and assure them that their children had already been accounted for, etc. etc. This took the better part of an hour.
I, and the children have since gone home, but I'm definitely buying the paper tonight to see what's up with this, because, damn.
That will be all.
Last December, a kid in my neighborhood got a phone call one afternoon. "Hi, this is Tanaka at the Board of Education at City Hall. We're currently holding the intra-city meeting to plan the third term, but the student enrollment records have been forgotten to be brought." (Yes, Japanese really does phrase things this way.)
The caller continued, "We have a version of them here, but we aren't certain how up-to-date it is. Can I check some things with you?"
"Okay," said the student.
"Are you [student's name], living at [student's address], with the phone number [student's phone number]?
"Yes," said the student.
The caller then asked about the student's school, homeroom, and student number. His information was correct.
"Okay, is your younger brother [brother's name] a student at Shimizu elementary?"
"Yes."
"And does your father work at [company name]?"
"Yes."
The caller then proceeded to reel off the names, addresses, and phone numbers of several other students, which the student in question corroborated.
"And is Machida Keisuke in Grade 2, Homeroom 5, with the student number 14?"
"No," said the student. "There's no Machida Keisuke there. Do you mean Matsuda Keisuke?" She gave the caller the correct information, which one assumes he made note of.
At this point, the student's mother returned, and the student handed the phone to her. Tanaka-san at the city hall hung up. The mother called our school to ask about this phone call.
Of course, there was no Tanaka-san at the intra-city planning meeting for third term, which was well under way with a complete and up-to-date set of enrollment records. The fact that the mystery caller, who was most likely not associated with city hall in any way, still had mostly accurate information on a whole bunch of students, was pretty frightening.
Throughout the day, 'Tanaka-san' called at least two other people, most likely to try the same stunt, but hung up when the kids went to put their parents on the phone.
Then nothing happened for three months, except a lot of general overreaction to every strange occurrence. (To illustrate: two men in a car with Niigata plates pulled up to a couple of elementary school girls and asked them if they were on the right road to the station. The kids told their homeroom teachers, which resulted in all the students at my school being sent home three hours early for safety's sake.)
Well, today we might have seen the ultimate purpose of Tanaka-san's calls. One of my favorite 2nd year students was hustled into the staff room today. Today is the day, incidentally, when all city personnel are transferred to new jobs, and we were right in the middle of that when she was brought into the staff room. City hall immediately stopped issuing the transfer orders.
Now, nothing under the sun is more important than those transfer orders, so this was BIG.
What had happened? Her mother had received a phone call from someone claiming to have her daughter in their possession, and demanding that she transfer a very large amount of money into a their bank account if she didn't want her kid dead. Luckily, the mother did the sensible thing, which was to agree to the caller's demands, hang up, call the cops, and then call the school to make sure her kid really was missing.
Well, her kid wasn't missing. (And interesting side note: my l33t 1kyuu skills allow me to easily call to mind three words meaning 'to kidnap.' As it was described to me, the caller above did not use any of them, but instead said that he had 'entrusted himself' with the woman's daughter, which is so perfectly Japanese in a really horrible way.)
First, we had to round up all the teachers getting their reassignments, in the bathrooms crying, or being comforted by the school counselor, and then begin the huge task of rounding up all 800 kids from their various club practices and herding them into the gym in order to make sure they were all accounted for.
As we were doing this, another parent got a call by someone making the same threat. This parent also did the sensible thing and called the cops, who immediately called us, not only to inform us about the 2nd call, but because they'd done some investigation into the account number the 'kidnappers' had given, and it's a bank account associated with THE FREAKING YAKUZA, which makes these phone calls 100% more serious.
After that, work transfers were put on hold while every staff member in the school called each of the families of our 800 students to inform them about the call and assure them that their children had already been accounted for, etc. etc. This took the better part of an hour.
I, and the children have since gone home, but I'm definitely buying the paper tonight to see what's up with this, because, damn.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2005-03-24 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-25 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-24 03:43 pm (UTC)Ewwwww.
That is incredibly scary... stay safe!
no subject
on 2005-03-25 01:03 am (UTC)Thanks. I'm not to worried about me, but I'm really glad the kids' mothers didn't transfer the money!
no subject
on 2005-03-25 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-28 10:06 am (UTC)