Japan is a place where strange things happen

. . . if you can believe CNN.com. And I’m not really saying that you should, it was just a remark.

Check this one out:

Woman dead in bath full of sand

(good title!)

TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- The body of a young British teacher has been found in a bathtub full of sand on an apartment balcony near Tokyo, Japanese police said on Tuesday.

Police in Ichikawa, east of Tokyo, identified the body as that of Lindsay Ann Hawker, 22, who worked at a language school, a police spokesman said. Her body was found late on Monday.

"The bathtub was left out on the balcony and the (corpse) was left there in the bathtub," chief investigator Yoshihiro Sugita told reporters.

"Furthermore, the corpse was covered with dirt as if to hide it," he added.

A 28-year-old Japanese man who lived in the apartment fled when police arrived. Domestic media said the man was known to the victim.

A British woman who lived with Hawker was reported to have called the police on Monday afternoon to tell them the woman had not come home.

"We can confirm that a British national is missing -- an English teacher -- and as you know the Japanese police have discovered a body," a British Embassy spokesman said. "Beyond that we cannot comment."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/03/27/japan.murder.reut/index.html

The poor woman was my age. She was probably on the JET program or some other teaching English in Japan program that she thought would lead to an awesome time to travel and do fun stuff. Instead she ended up in a bathtub full of sand. Weird.

Dylan actually had a bit of a take on this. Apparently there is a very popular manga series called Naruto that involves a villain who carries around a bag of sand. This sand is the spiritual embodiment of his dead mother, and she goes around killing people from the vantage point of said sand. He is suggesting that perhaps some kinky, role-based sex play got out of control, and she ended up suffocated by their prop. I’ll have to keep an eye on this story.

Dylan does have a point. If the British people who go to teach English in Japan are anything like their American counterparts, then they are a group of under-socialized, manga and anime fanatics who somehow manage to develop crushes on cartoon characters and think that’s normal. This would be the sort of thing such-a-ones would go for. Alas, I hope it is something as innocent as all that, and not some crazed serial killer who targets foreign women. I can’t imagine the Tokyo police are too thrilled about this.