Truth may not be stranger than fiction, but it's usually more dramatic, as proven in a series of best-selling memoirs by Mayumi Takeda. The 32-year-old writer has lived what some people have described as a "roller-coaster life," and Monday night on Nippon TV's "Super TV" documentary program, this life will be presented in full.
Takeda lost her hearing at the age of 3 following an illness. When she was 6, she was raped by a stranger and, throughout her school days, she was a victim of bullies. Suicide was always on her mind.
But she persevered and, determined to become a fashion designer, she entered a technical school in 1989 and did very well. After graduation, she worked full-time for employment publishers Recruit, but also developed a fascination for American soldiers, and started hanging out at bars and clubs near U.S. military bases in and around Tokyo. She decided to go to New York and so quit her job to work in the sex industry, where the money was much better. The fact that she was deaf gave her some "added value," and she became one of the most popular "fashion health" (massage parlor) workers in the business.