Don certainly had ME fooled: Met me at Narita airport on one of my trips over there and took me straight to Nagase sensei's class, where everyone seemed to know him and he translated for Nagase. From there he drove me to this house he pretended to live in, complete with a Japanese woman pretending to be his wife and a little dog and cat. Put me up there for a week. Even took me to an English poetry event at a Japanese school, where he'd somehow gotten everyone to pretend that he was a teacher of English so that the illusion of his being a Japan resident wouldn't be spoiled.
It was a truly masterful con, I have to give Don that much. I never even suspected.