After working here for the past three years, what has surprised me the most is how close everyone is to each other. Everyone is family. His right hand man, Fujiwara, a sizeable man in his mid-fifties who literally runs on alcohol, is married to Hiroshi’s older sister. If you were to say there was a “draft” in here he would likely give you a smirk and ask for one himself. He too was exceptional with his hands, though he was a bit of a live wire. You never really knew when he would flare up.

Then there was Take, a fresh youngster like myself, who despite being the same age as me, was married—to one of Hiroshi’s relatives—and working on his third kid. They called him, Shūjin, meaning prisoner.

They called him Shūjin—not because he had ever set foot in a prison, but because the school he attended might as well have been one. Unpainted concrete walls and barred windows, they were just missing the orange jumpsuits. I remember him more for his smile, which looked like the side of a fishing boat.

I still hadn’t mentioned the fact that I had actually been to prison—well juvenile prison.

The Whodunit Diaries