Long ago in the early days of the JET Program, there was a woman named Mary who came to live in Kumamoto, in a town called Ozu.  Mary was a sociable girl, and was easy to befriend by just about anybody.  But Mary had a reckless fascination with the Japanese mafia.

It wasn’t long before Mary was working her way in to the Yakuza circles, and she eventually even married a mafioso.  She had a child with this man, and everything was going fine.  Until the day she met another mafioso, whom she was very attracted to.  Mary ended up having an affair.

Well, as you might expect, word of this Yakuza love triangle got around.  One day, Mary and her daughter vanished without a trace.  She didn’t show up for work, nobody could reach her phone, and she wasn’t at home.  The police searched her apartment, but all they found was a mysterious stain on the floor, and fingernail marks on the wall.

Mary was never found.  People who rent her apartment never stay for more than a month.  The man living in the apartment next to Mary’s says at night he sometimes hears a baby crying, and the sound of fingernails running down the wall.

Such is the legend of Mary of Ozu.  Happy Halloween.