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I used to live in CHiba City in Japan. I belonged to this commercial gym in the city center. Was expensive and it didn't have much in the way of free weights. Like one squat rack and two bench presses in ttoal, and the dumbbells only went to 45lbs or so. I ended up changing gyms. There was one on a side street that I found a kilo from my apt. It was a run down old skool gym. Lots of free weights, and dumbbells going up to like 120. Even had old tyme kettlebells. Was the same price as the other gym, and was closer, and it didn't have weird time rules like no Sat for my membership level. It was run down, like pics from the 80s of strong men coming to the gym, and most the stuff was from the 1980s. The upstairs was an an aprtment, but looked super run down and old as well.
I ended up joining around Dec 2010 or something. The owner was this old Japanese guy who had some muscle and a cool mustache. Well I didn't know was that he went to pachinko or something and had run up some serious debts. He got rid of his car to make payments or save money. He also apparently kept a knife nearby in case. There was also a big black Toyota Crown sitting outside at nights. A lot of this I didn't really notice nor care about.
Come March, we had the quake, and I had spring break from teaching, and I was headed to the airport. One of the gym members called me, he had my #, cuz it was a small gym and I chatted with a lot of members there. I thought he was just calling to talk and I was about to board, so I was like yeah make it quick. They found the gym owner in the gym(they kept the key hidden outside so you could come in and train when ever), had hung himself. So what had happened he had gone to a pachinko parlor and gambled too much, and got a loan or something shady. Well pachinko is often mob ran, so he probably got a loan shark to loan him money. He couldn't pay it, so they were sending guys to collect.
In Japan if you can't pay or are trouble with the mob, it's better to kill yourself it appears. As it spares you the indignity of being beaten to death, and they may also go after your family to get you to pay. Death seems to ease that.
Anyhow, a pro wrestler ended up buying the gym and it stayed the same, so that part was good.
But yeah don't owe the yakuza money.
I ended up joining around Dec 2010 or something. The owner was this old Japanese guy who had some muscle and a cool mustache. Well I didn't know was that he went to pachinko or something and had run up some serious debts. He got rid of his car to make payments or save money. He also apparently kept a knife nearby in case. There was also a big black Toyota Crown sitting outside at nights. A lot of this I didn't really notice nor care about.
Come March, we had the quake, and I had spring break from teaching, and I was headed to the airport. One of the gym members called me, he had my #, cuz it was a small gym and I chatted with a lot of members there. I thought he was just calling to talk and I was about to board, so I was like yeah make it quick. They found the gym owner in the gym(they kept the key hidden outside so you could come in and train when ever), had hung himself. So what had happened he had gone to a pachinko parlor and gambled too much, and got a loan or something shady. Well pachinko is often mob ran, so he probably got a loan shark to loan him money. He couldn't pay it, so they were sending guys to collect.
In Japan if you can't pay or are trouble with the mob, it's better to kill yourself it appears. As it spares you the indignity of being beaten to death, and they may also go after your family to get you to pay. Death seems to ease that.
Anyhow, a pro wrestler ended up buying the gym and it stayed the same, so that part was good.
But yeah don't owe the yakuza money.
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