Rabbits Transcripts

CARLY: (voiceover) I first heard about the game shortly after my best friend, Yumiko Takata, disappeared. I started this podcast because I want to find out what happened to my friend. From the Public Radio Alliance, and Minnow Beats Whale, you're listening to Rabbits. I'm Carly Parker. Stay with us. So, I took the photo of Yumiko to the police, convinced I finally had something they would respond to. She'd gotten that tattoo about a month before she disappeared. The police looked into it, but the problem was, Yumiko never told her parents or her brother about the tattoo. The artist who did it was unreachable. Apparently, he'd moved to Thailand to live off the grid. The police asked me if I had any evidence that Yumiko had been working as a prostitute. I told them she wasn't a prostitute, but that she must have been masquerading as one for some reason. I could tell they were getting tired of me. Extremely tired. I needed to try something else. [Phone ringing.]

CARLY: (voiceover) I first heard about the game just about a month ago. It was shortly after my best friend, Yumiko Takata, disappeared. They don't have Amber Alerts for grown-ups. The police told us Yumiko was probably just having fun, sewing her wild oats. They actually said this. Or, as one detective proclaimed, as if he thought he'd actually just cracked the case, she took off as a kind of rebellion, a way of asserting her individuality in the face of her parents' and her culture's high expectations. Yumiko is second-generation Japanese. She was born here, in Seattle. Her parents came over from Tokyo shortly after they were married. They never pushed her to get straight As, or attend law or medical school. They just wanted their daughter to be happy. Yumiko did actually end up in law school for about six weeks. This was after a year spent abroad, and a few months in Silicon Valley, where she created an app in an incubator. She hated it. She came back home to Seatt