For Rebecca Malthus, 28, Tokyo was a glittering, humming world away from the usual Kiwi OE pilgrimages to grey, familiar London.

She and her newly arrived friend, Gina Smith, also 28, moved into an apartment in the hip inner-city district of Shibuya, an exuberant parading ground for throngs of bizarrely dressed young people, and a hub for shopping and nightclubbing. In the days, each taught English at local high schools. In the evenings, Malthus hostessed at a bar, did acting jobs on a television show, or taught private English students, usually finishing up at about 1am.

"Heaps of Kiwi girls are over there. It's a big exciting city that is also really safe," says Malthus.

Together they planned to travel to Mt Fuji, to famous temples, to hot pools. But their plans were soon to be savagely derailed. Their choice of apartment would prove to be terribly unlucky. Their strange and sometimes frightening ordeal began unremarkably, when a postman appeared at their door one day in early May bearing a heavy package from Nepal. It was addressed to their flat, to a Guy Warner. Another flat mate turned the postie away, saying there was no one there of that name.

A few days later on May 16, Malthus and Smith were called home to find their apartment swarming with police.

"The apartment was covered in policemen, it was nuts. I found out later they had guns, they had actually been staking out the apartment for weeks," says Malthus, now recuperating with her family in Nelson. Police discovered tiny amounts of cannabis in the two women's bedrooms - 0.3g in Gina's room and 1.3g in Rebecca's room. The women occasionally smoked cannabis. But the police's real quarry was the elusive "Guy Warner". The package that had been turned away, the stunned women were later told, contained half a kilo of hash worth $40,000. The police arrested Malthus and Smith, suspecting they were mixed up in international drug trafficking. The two English teachers had begun their journey into Japan's notorious and unusual system of justice.

Initially told they would be in custody for a day or two to answer questions, the women had in fact entered a state of judicial limbo. Under the "daiyo kangoku" system of imprisonment without trial, prisoners can be held for interrogation for 23 days without charge, without being offered bail, and without proper legal representation. Both Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Committee have condemned the practice, which persuades many prisoners to confess to whatever they are accused of. "Many detainees confess during this initial detention period. Some have reportedly been beaten and many have alleged that they were tricked into believing that if they confessed the detention would end. The forced confessions have been used in court as evidence," says Amnesty in a 2000 report.

Questioned individually, Malthus and Smith were each tied to a chair with a rope during questioning, and escorted to sessions in handcuffs. But they say they were not treated badly. The police spent days trying to pin them down into confessions about the package that they knew nothing about. At times the questioning descended into farce. Smith mentioned the name "Guy Warner" was familiar, because it was the name of a character in Shortland Street. The police went into a flurry of excitement, seeing this as confirmation that there was a Kiwi connection. Malthus came in for particularly close attention because she had lived in Japan for eight years, while Smith had arrived only two months earlier. Malthus says she was questioned about 20 times, in sessions that could last all day.

"They'd say: 'You Kiwi girls, we can't understand, why aren't you crying'? Because they like people to cry, it makes them feel like you're being reformed. I think most Japanese people get into the interrogation rooms and just burst into tears and tell them everything.

"They said that we were stubborn, they'd never seen anything like it. I never cried or anything. I was going, 'you can't break me', and stuff like this, and they were going 'yes we can'," says Malthus.

She was given brief access to a lawyer, but formed the suspicion that the lawyer worked for the police. It was not until after they were charged that both women saw a lawyer they found helpful. At the Narita jail Malthus and Smith kept their spirits up by talking to each other through the walls of their adjoining cells, and by making friends with other inmates. The guards were kind, believing the women to be innocent of trafficking. But after two months, when charges of possession of cannabis had been laid, they were transferred to the much harsher Chiba prison, where they were to end up staying another month. Prisoners there were held in solitary confinement, in tiny cells where the lights blaze 24 hours a day. As in other Japanese jails, prisoners must submit to a tyranny of trivial rules that can include where they look and the position they sit in all day. Again Amnesty International has complained, calling it "inhuman and degrading treatment". From morning until night, prisoners had to sit cross-legged in their cells.

"You're not allowed to lie down, you're not allowed to stand up unless you're going to the toilet. You're not allowed to do anything except read or write a letter," says Malthus. At bed time, prisoners were not allowed to put anything over their heads to shield their eyes from the blazing lights. On rare trips out of the cell, behaviour was strictly regulated. Prisoners were forbidden from even looking at anyone else. If a male prisoner was seen in the distance, female prisoners had to turn and face the wall. Visits from staff at the New Zealand High Commission were a high point, as were any letters or magazines that arrived.

The prison refused to provide any special meals for Malthus, who is vegetarian. Her weight dropped from 56kg to 46kg. By the time she left prison she says she had difficulty walking because her muscles had weakened from the limited exercise she was given. For Smith, who also came out weighing just 47kg, Chiba was like being dropped into a black hole.

"Sometimes it felt like the world didn't exist outside. It's like you're dead. It's like nothing else is out there," she says. "The days seemed endless. I tried to use it as a time to think about life and meditate, all those things you don't seem to get time for when you're busy with normal life. I would try and think about my family and friends but that was kind of more upsetting," says Smith.

Smith decided not to let her family know she was in jail because she didn't want to worry them. She finally got a friend to tell her mother after she had been released, a week before she came home on August 18.

Malthus and Smith each pleaded guilty to possession of cannabis, having earlier signed confessions. For each, sentencing contained a nasty surprise. The judge read out a sentence of six months' prison with hard labour. Malthus began to shake and cry. In each case, it was only later that it became clear it was a suspended sentence, and thus each was free to go. Smith, who was deported, cannot return to Japan for 20 years. Malthus is free to return, but will have the suspended sentence hanging over her head for three years, ready to be reactivated should she infringe even minor laws. Leaving jail was glorious, says Smith. Her senses exploded. It was "smelling things, everything looked bright and everything was exciting and food was just so wonderful. I didn't know what to do first! "I got a sore throat because I hadn't spoken for a whole month to anyone and I was talking a lot for a couple of days. I just couldn't stop talking," she says, in Nelson last week to visit Malthus.

Both are still writing to friends they made at Narita, inmates unlikely to win their freedom any time soon. They know now how much it means to get a letter. Malthus plans to write a book about her ordeal and is wondering whether to take up a job offer to return to Japan as a tour guide. Smith, a journalist by trade, isn't sure what she will do next. Friends tell her she needs a rest. But she doesn't think so. "After sitting around for so long, I want to do something now. But it's good. I can never say I'm bored again."

Foreign Prisoner Support Services would like to acknowledge the source of this information: SUNDAY STAR TIMES [NZ] http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2665933a1861,00.html

Journalist Gina Smith looks back on her ordeal in Japan with a mixture of emotions. There is something about our prison experience that we both miss - the other prisoners.

When I was first put in a cell late the night of my arrest I met two young Japanese women, Keiko and Sari, who had waited up to see the "new face".

I had fears of being beaten up by the other inmates. Instead in almost perfect English they told me not to worry and explained what would happen in the days to follow. We soon became the best of friends.

"My heart is black so in jail I want to paint it pink again," Sari told me late one night.

At just 24, the pretty bonsai gardener was talked into carrying cannabis from France to Japan. She had shamed her family, lost her boyfriend, friends, job and, for the next four to five years, her life will be spent in jail doing forced labour in a factory or kitchen. If you could meet her you would love her. We laughed so much together and sometimes cried.

One day we got a new cellmate. I didn't like Lourdes Perez at first because she had smelly breath and snored like a hippo. And she had no sense of personal space.

She ate like the first person finished would be freed and then burped openly as everyone tried to finish their food - which was almost impossible because it was hard enough to stomach anyway.

The 57-year-old Filipina is awaiting trial for overstaying her tourist visa. It expired in 1992. Her daughter and grandchildren made a life in Tokyo but she couldn't get a visa and so she just decided never to leave.

She was caught in May after stealing a tube of toothpaste because she was short of money. She was mortified when police took photographs of her wearing handcuffs in front of her house in full view of her grandchildren and the neighbours. A week later her sister in London was diagnosed with cancer. Sharing such cramped quarters, I got to know her well and behind the belching was a lovely woman who faithfully read her Bible every day, prayed for all of us and cried silent tears after family visits. Watching someone bearing the wrinkles of a life already hard lived and go through so much trauma, it was impossible not to love her - burps and all.

Foreign Prisoner Support Services would like to acknowledge the source of this information: SUNDAY STAR TIMES [NZ] http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2665933a1861,00.html