RResidents in Japan

Hiring a Private investigator

Anyone who had experienced hiring a P.I. in Japan? Could you share leads of good ones?

My Japanese husband and I are talking about divorce since last year. But nothing is really final yet. Recently, he comes up with really shallow excuses seemingly wanting me out of the house. He seems to be in a hurry to divorce. We’ve been together for 9 years and we don’t have a kid. I suspect he is seeing someone else. He’s been spending a lot of time at work, coming home at 11:30 or midnight almost everyday. And going to the gym on Sundays for almost 5-6 hours. My suspicion started when one of his knit sweaters was missing. He wears one everyday on top of his ワイシャツ. I mean, how can you lose something you should be wearing all the time? I asked him about it but he said, he doesn’t know. Today, while he was drying his hair, I saw a bruise on his chest near the nipple. I asked him about it and he said, he was pressing it hard yesterday because he had some chest pains. It was yellowish already. Something that is recent should be reddish or purplish. I think it’s a hickey. I’m so confused right now. Am I paranoid? Am I just overthinking it? I want to know the reason why he wants to divorce so soon. I still care about him and I want our marriage to work. But if he’s cheating on me, I want to know and use it as a leverage in the future.

27 comments

  1. I don’t know any private investigators unfortunately, but I wish you good luck. Sounds like he is cheating and not even doing it very well. These are all typical signs of cheating.

  2. Thanks for taking the time to respond. I sometimes think I’m just being negative and suspect too much.

  5. It’s one of those knit sweaters/jumper. O don’t know how you really call it but here it’s the ニットセーター？ He wears them all day as his office is quite cold. Granted that he takes it off, wouldn’t he remember where he left it? Hickey is also a bruise which at first is reddish then purplish and when it is healing like yellowish of some sort.

    Thanks. I’m still shocked that my marriage is turning to be a nightmare.

  8. If he wants divorce already, I wouldn’t worry about the cheating. It’ll be hard to prove and if he is paying for it, it doesn’t count as grounds for divorce in the eyes of Japanese law. You also have no kids which makes things easier. Just file for 協議離婚

  9. No, you’re not paranoid. You hubby clearly has another, separate life.

    Maybe it’s a mistress, maybe he’s gay, maybe he’s gambling or running with the mob.

    Does it matter really, what it is?

    What outcome do you want from a PI? Better settlement? Moral superiority?

    P.S. sorry I’m not knowledgeable enough to help with your specific ask.

  10. Good luck. Take him to the cleaners I say. You can sue whomever he’s cheating with. People have done it before. Not sure how it works if she’s a sex worker tho.

  11. They can follow your husband and take photographs from public places or roads up to the point he enters someone’s apartment or love hotel. They cannot wiretap phones or break into someone’s apartment.

  12. We’ve all heard lots of shit stories on this sub.

    First, let’s assume his mistress is also married. All of you telling OP to sue the mistress… couldn’t her husband sue OP’s husband….

    Second, I’ve heard it’s only if you can prove intent on the mistresses part to break up the marriage.

    In summation, I don’t know shit. I’m guessing most of you don’t either.

    Good luck OP. I hope you find a good PI and a lawyer.

  13. Get proof, this sounds unsalvageable.

    Simply rules for dealing with cheating

    1) How did it happen?

    Long affair? Thats tough to forgive

    2) How many times did it happen?

    Many times? Pretty unforgivable

    3) Why did it happen

    Mental health is good, no past trauma, no stress or issues. Pretty impossible to reconcile

    4) How did you find out?

    Did they tell you immediately? Did they seem remourseful? Did they hide it and you had to fight to find out? Again unforgivable.

    Cheating is like any bad behaviour if they do it more than once then they have severe issues.

    Im sorry this is happening to you. I have been cheated on a few times and I have also cheated one time. Let me tell you when I did it, it nearly took my life. The guilt and remorse crushed me. I told my gf immediately. It made me come face to face with a lot of childhood trauma I had ignored and seek help for my mental health. To hide it like your husband shows he has no respect or feelings for you.

  16. Just get a divorce. None of this matters at this point, whether he lost his sweater or how he got a yellow mark on his chest. If what you are saying is indeed true, the marriage is done. So save yourself the grief and go to the city office and get the divorce forms.

  17. Have you actually confronted him and asked if he’s having an affair? If you’re willing to work things out to keep the relationship going, try not to start with secrecy and spying. If you’d go so far as to hire a PI because you think he’s cheating, you might as well just hire a divorce attorney instead.

    If you get a PI and find out he’s been cheating, then you’re going to have to get a divorce lawyer anyway to sort things out. If you find out he hasn’t been cheating, then you have to live with the guilt of being so suspicious of him that you hired a stranger to follow him around. If you just ask him directly, either you have a huge fight, or the truth, good or bad, comes out.

  18. I’m sorry about your situation, and I can’t help with the private investigator, but I can help with the bruise versus hickey thing.

    Medically speaking a bruise and a hickey are the same thing, they’re broken blood vessels under the skin.

    However there are some tell-tale differences between a bruise caused by impact (like a punch) and one caused by suction (a hickey):

    1. A hickey generally has an initially “speckled” appearance with brighter and darker spots. This is because the suction tends to draw blood to the surface from less deep blood vessels. An impact bruise generally has a more uniform appearance.
    2. This second one is more vague and less definitive, but I’ll include it anyway. A hickey is normally about an inch to an inch and a half across (larger generally indicating a larger, typically male, mouth) and normally has an oval shape because this is how people tend to kiss. An impact bruise is generally the shape of whatever caused it and tends to be rounder as the impact is spread out through the surrounding tissue (like a drop of water tends to make a circular pattern in water). There are exceptions here, for example, if their lover is part leech and just sucking away with an open mouth the size and shape will be rounder and larger.
    3. Healing progress is the much the same and is no real indicator of anything.

    I would note that if the speckling indicates this is a hickey then it is highly probable that your husband’s new lover did it deliberately and knowingly as a way of “marking their territory”. While your husband may not yet be willing to come clean they are likely to continue leaving “clues” for you to find. They want you to know.

    I would recommend against being intimate with your husband in the meantime or at least use a barrier method of contraception (like condoms) for the time being – both as a means of preventing a pregnancy that may become a complicated issue during the divorce, and as a means of preventing any STDs from a possible unknown “third party” whose sexual history is as much of a mystery as their identity.

    I hope this helps a little. I’m sorry for your current situation, it … sucks. Sorry! Sorry! I couldn’t resist!!!

  19. Japanese husbands cheating is as normal as birds flying.

    Then again, the wife is often cheating, too!

  20. A female foreign friend found out her husband made somebody else pregnant, had ample evidence, left their house, contacted a lawyer and tried to get her husband to pay up… but in the end the payment they agreed on ended up pretty low, I think 1.5mil, her lawyer told her it would be hard to get much more because they had no children and had only been married for 3 or so years. This amount would only have covered her lawyer’s fees, and she didn’t have to hire a PI either… I say “would have” because he renegated and stopped responding and she’s now taking him to family court now to finalize the divorce and get the payout. Your case might be different because you’ve been together for a longer time, so consult with a lawyer, but it might be best (at least financially) to just cut your losses here, get divorced and then move on.

  21. Opinion from a cheater: your husband is probably cheating on you. Does he take gym clothes or towels every time with him and do the clothes come back sweaty? If not, you know the answer. You can also ask a friend to go to the same gym and check if he’s there maybe twice (two separate days, in case he actually goes to the gym one of the days).

    Take in consideration that since the relationship is not going well for a while already, and that he said he wants you out of the house, it’s likely he may just admit to cheating and tell you to get out of his life asap, specially if money is not an issue to him. Be prepared for it when you confront him.

  23. PI friend of mine once said, “if you think you need a PI to validate a significant other’s behavior, then you don’t need a PI”. In other words, if it has reached that point, it is time to go.

  24. Two things:

    1. You need to know who and what you’re working with – who is involved in your husband’s alleged affair, how many (just in case it’s not one), and what activities are they involved in (sex needs to be a part of it). This is why I think you’re on the money about hiring a PI, as you need to set the parameters of your husband’s yūseki rikon 有責離婚 (at-fault divorce). Hiring a kōshinsho 興信所for uwaki chōsa 浮気調査 is costly, so you need to start documenting your spouse’s schedule to have an timeframe for when exactly to hire a tantei 探偵, who does the actual following and documenting (i.e. – when they can best document an act of extramarital affair, like going to a love hotel or a private room in a hotel, but not the lobby where it could be hearsay for a ‘business meeting’ or inside their workplace no matter how late, etc.). All this because you are likely a foreign national divorcing a Japanese spouse and you need the yūseki rikon 有責離婚 to leverage the proceedings on your behalf. Note that if you are American, some states do not recognize a paper divorce, and you do need a kyōgi rikon 協議離婚 signed off by a judge. You need to be prepared.

    Regardless of the outcome of the divorce, if you can identify an affair partner, you can also sue for isharyo 慰謝料 (can be negotiated down to jidan 示談 if the AP is unaware your husband was married) via minji soshō 民事訴訟. It wouldn’t be about the money, but more for the record that your divorce was forced by a third party.

    2. I know none of the above helps with the emotional toll a divorce takes on a person. Make sure you have proper and reliable legal counsel that is experienced in kokusai rikon 国際離婚 cases. Make sure you have a good support system. Make sure you are physically and financially safe. Know that while it may not seem like it, you’ll get through, and with time, this too shall pass. I’m sorry this is happening to you. Believe it or not, there will be better days ahead. Be easy on yourself.

  25. Definitely sounds like cheating. Yes private investigators exist and handle this stuff I believe. Don’t know any I could recommend

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