CHIBA (TR) – On October 28, Chiba Prefectural Police arrested 32-year-old Mami Asaka on suspicion of murder. Police allege that Asaka stabbed her boyfriend, 21-year-old Chantal Badal, to death with a kitchen knife at a love hotel in Funabashi City between 4:35 a.m. and 8:15 a.m. on October 5.
The love hotel is located within a five-minute walk from JR Funabashi Station. At around 8:05 a.m., Asaka called emergency services. “A man is unconscious and not breathing. He is bleeding after stabbing himself in the chest with a knife,” she said.
Emergency personnel arriving at the hotel room found Badal lying face down in a pool of blood near the door, where he was pronounced dead.
On the day of the incident, police first accused Asaka of theft. She allegedly stole two knives from a retailer in Chiba City two days before. The knives are believed to have been used in the incident.
Asaka and Badal met when they colleagues at a factory. Tabloids are now reporting on the issue, with Shueisha Online providing insight into Badal’s last hours.
“I wanted to die with my boyfriend”
“When police officers arrived at the scene and questioned Asaka about the two knives found in the room, she confessed to shoplifting,” an investigator told the site. “She then said, ‘I wanted to die with my boyfriend, and since I was going to die anyway, I might as well steal.'”
Based on the condition of the scene and the body, police determined that Asaka was likely involved in a murder, which led to her arrest at the Funabashi Police Station on that charge on October 28.
A related investigator revealed, “The moment we showed her the arrest warrant for murder, she immediately said, ‘It’s a mistake.’ She has remained silent ever since.”
Asaka was sent to the local prosecutor’s office on the morning of October 29, but she stubbornly refused to leave the detention center that day. “It took multiple police officers a long time to persuade her to leave,” an investigative sources said.
“Japanese people are kind”
Badal lived with his brother and other relatives in an apartment about a 15-minute walk from JR Tsudanuma Station. On October 29, Shueisha Online spoke with Badal’s brother.
“My younger brother really loved Japan,” the brother said. “He especially loved anime. He even asked ChatGPT, ‘How can I get involved in Japanese anime?’ I think he loved Japanese anime and wanted to make it his career.”
He went on, “Japanese people are kind, and many of them follow the rules. He also said Japan is a great country. I heard he wanted to come to his favorite country and fulfill his dreams. He said he wanted to work hard in Japan and buy a house for his parents in Nepal.”
Badal started studying Japanese before coming to Japan in 2024. He then began attending a two-year vocational school in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
“He was very enthusiastic, using his reference books so much that they were falling apart,” the brother said. “After graduation, he wanted to study business,” the brother said. “So he is considering going on to a business vocational school in Chiba City and had already submitted his application.”
“She was crying a lot”
Badal’s brother has never met Asaka.
“I heard that my brother met Asaka at a factory in Narashino City where he had been working part-time since November of last year,” the brother said. “In April of this year, he told me that he had gotten a girlfriend who was older than him. He said, ‘She’s 10 years older than me, but looks young.’ He also said she was short and petite.
I told him, ‘If you like her, that’s fine.’ It’s up to him to make the decision, regardless of nationality. Over the past month, he’d often meet with [Asaka] every Saturday night through Sunday evening. I hadn’t heard anything about any trouble up until then. But on the night of October 2, while I was drinking with him at home, he told me that he’d talked about breaking up with her. He said that when he brought up the topic over the phone, she was crying a lot.”
By this time, Badal had quit his job at the factory and was working part-time in the kitchen of an izakaya.
“On October 4, the day before the incident, I was on a shift and my brother was at work too. I finished work at 10:30 p.m. and said to him, ‘You’re going home today, right? You’ve broken up [with her], haven’t you?’ He said, ‘I want to see her one last time today and talk.’ My brother was a sincere person, so maybe he wanted to have a proper discussion and get it over with.”
“A lot of blood”
On the day of the incident, Badal’s brother started work at his part-time job at another izakaya from 4 p.m.
“My brother and I shared location information [with each other], and when I checked his phone’s GPS, he was in Higashi-Funabashi, not moving. [I thought] something must have happened. So as I was working I wondered if they’d had a fight or something.”
The GPS showed Badal’s location to be the same after 6:00 p.m. Thinking this was strange, the brother called police.
“It took three different people before they finally told me, ‘Your brother was confirmed dead at 8:15 this morning.’ I couldn’t believe it. After that, I went to the police. They showed me a photo of my brother’s face and asked, ‘Are you sure this is him?’ It was right. So I asked them if they could at least let me see his face, and they said, “We’ll let you see his face, but there’s a lot of blood. I said, “Okay, just let me see his face, please.” I looked at him. His cheeks were very cold.”
“I no longer know who to trust”
Badal’s parents are in Japan. His brother said that they are not planning to come to Japan.
“When I called, my mother cried the whole time. My father was speechless,” the brother said.
Badal’s brother, too, is struggling.
“Even if I try to work, I just can’t find the motivation,” he said. “I can’t go to work right now. I really want to go, but even if I did, we would work in the same place, and when I go there, I end up remembering those tragic events that happened to my brother while I’m at work.”
The investigation is ongoing.
“We don’t know what information we’ll hear in the future,” Badal’s brother said. “All we can do is wait. I don’t know what to do next…I love Japan. But this incident has scared me. My brother died in this way, and the police initially suspected suicide. I no longer know who to trust.”
He went on, “After the autopsy, my brother returned home in silence, his body covered in wounds. About 10 in all. There were cuts on his stomach, a stab wound on his thigh, and a wound on his left hand that looked like it had been made by a knife. I felt like he was trying to protect himself.”
Police told Badal’s brothe that eight large cans of the alcohol chuhai were found in the love hotel room upon the arrival of emergency services.
“My brother has a low tolerance for alcohol and would never drink that much himself,” Badal’s brother said. “I just want to know the truth about what happened between the two of them. I can only hope that the investigation progresses.”
