On his blog, he wrote:
I first had a work visa for Japan in 1989, and my last renewal began in 2008.
So, if it was a 3-year visa that started in 2008 (which month we do not know), it's
possible it was still valid, but seeing as it was Dec. 23 that they stopped him it would have barely been. Who's to say when it was due to expire, though? Perhaps this is what was meant about his visa status being unclear, but why can't he just come right out and discuss such a simplistic thing? He went into so many other details (including supposedly being allowed to wander from room to room with his cell phone looking for a strong signa; yeah, right!).
When I refused to sign his falsely-determined expulsion order, he gave me another document, a "right to appeal" to the Minister of Justice.
"You should sign here, immediately," he said. I looked over the document. It said I had three days to make an appeal.
"How long will it take for the Minister of Justice to reply? It's a Friday afternoon on a long weekend over Christmas. What if he's out of the country until after the New Year holiday?"
"I cannot say," he said arrogantly.
"I'm going to call my embassy," I said.
He laughed at me and bolted out of the room. I tried to make a mobile phone call but there was no signal in the room. I wandered into other rooms, hoping for a signal that didn't appear.
Even so, I agree with Mike:
I know the system has problems, but his style of "reporting" it leads me to doubt him severely.
Perhaps his own admissions on the blog about his abrasive reporting about TEPCO and other stuff pissed off someone, but I doubt that would have raised immigration's ears.
Though I had work visas dating back to 1989, and done hundreds of feature stories promoting Japanese tourism and culture, the Immigration Bureau in 2011 made it impossible for me to continue living and working in Japan. It was either bureaucratic incompetence, for which Japan has no shortage, or it was a back-handed way to kick a critical journalist out of the country. I believe it was the latter. My articles and TV reports were indeed very critical of TEPCO, Japan Tobacco, Olympus, JAL, gangsters, fascists, and state neglect of tsunami survivors and nuclear refugees.
BTW, has anyone here actually seen any of his articles, whether in English or Japanese?
Maybe it was his disheveled look, too:
Tired after 3 hours sleep overnight in Seoul, I nodded off.
Officers apparently didn't like that, and they woke me up. With uncombed hair, an unshaven face, and tired red eyes, they perhaps thought I was drunk or high, though I wasn't.
I find it still hard to believe. Morover, his blog dscribes an "updated" version of his original story, which had been written "from notes". Don't know when the second version came out, but it begins with a totally unnecessary prologue. One would think that after so many weeks have passed, that he'd have more to relate about his own plight, but that seems to be conspicuously missing.
