Police in Tokyo have indicted a 59-year-old woman on suspicion of violating the Stimulants Control Law after she attempted to smuggle around two kilograms of cocaine, worth the equivalent of 40 million yen, into Japan at Narita Airport.
Police said Harumi Miyauchi, a company executive from Nerima Ward, allegedly hid the drugs inside children’s books, NHK reported. She was arrested after the cocaine was discovered during a baggage inspection on April 15.
According to customs officers and police reports, Miyauchi landed at Narita Airport after departing from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) via Ethiopia. During a baggage inspection, customs officers found two children’s books with their back and front covers bulging one centimeter thick. That’s when they discovered the cocaine hidden inside.
Police quoted Miyauchi as saying that a foreigner at a hotel in Dubai handed her a backpack containing the two books as souvenirs. Police suspect that an international smuggling organization is involved and are investigating the supply route to Japan.
© Japan Today
34 Comments
Login to comment
Strangerland
Well done repaying them for making blanket statements about foreigners, by making a blanket statement about Japanese. Seems legit.
shogun36
No, just one moron who did a poor job smuggling in drugs.
And thank goodness she wasn’t a foreign tourist, or else all hell would’ve broken lose.
Since, you know, according to the Japanese, foreign tourists usually cause all the problems.
how are they gonna do that, while they sleep in the kobans?
They can’t even handle those bicycle hoodlums that don’t know how or where to park their bicycles.
Aly Rustom
or turn it all into suppositories and give to her that way.
Aly Rustom
a foreigner as in a person who is not a UAE national, or just someone who's not Japanese?
I'm guessing the latter, and I'm guessing she wants to play the foreigners are evil and I am a Japanese victim card. That's what it reads like to me.
Nuno Teixeira da Cunha
First , good work from the police , second , that is a very serious crime, she will be taken to the prision and stay therebdor a at least 20 years.
factchecker
Not for much longer, she won't be.
factchecker
Doesn't she know that as a Japanese that drugs are illegal and Japanese never break the law?
Rodney
Anybody who smuggles by airports is simply stupid and deserve to lose their ¥40m product. Everybody know you should use container boats or fishing boats. I hope they catch the top people. I hate hard drugs in Japan.
Daninthepan
I guess what she wanted to say was "someone who was not Japanese gave her the books" so how would you say that in Japanese? Oh yeah, gaikokujin or foreigner. I suppose if I'd just been arrested with 2kg of coke, I'd be worried about the sensitivities of a few white folk in Japan getting upset cos no one is looking out for them and would opt for the more lengthy and yet appropriate term of person not of Japanese descendency. Still, you'd forgive me if I didn't, right?
commanteer
Dubai is about 90% foreigners (non Dubai-born).
albaleo
And if they weren't in their own country?
Garthgoyle
I've always found it funny how Japanese refer to any other nationality as foreigners when they themselves are the gaijin outside of Japan.
oyatoi
Her trash the gaijin modus operandi is sure to go down a treat; playing to and reinforcing all the stereotypes. It should be called for what it is; repugnant and contemptible and this mule made to serve hard time.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1eab7076-f6c7-4590-b362-b44e002f6e77
Addfwyn
Hitting the mules won't have a huge impact in the end, unless you get their sources too. Like any business, they expect a certain amount of product loss, it just so happens their product is quite illegal. Getting a couple kg of cocaine here or there makes for good publicity for law enforcement but probably isn't even a blip on the syndicates moving the product.
Kaowaiinekochanknaw
Looks like she was the actual foreigner in Dubai.
John-San
Dogs can pick up the scent of the smallest amount of any substance when train for that certain substances, but not through Vacuum sealed bag. It is due to lack of care by those involves and handling the product by non cleaning and relax handling process. ( Contamination )
Very good example of grammar displayed in the first paragraph. When quoting numerals, any numbers larger then ten, can be written as a number. Ten and smaller numbers are spelt. EG 59 year old woman, two kilograms then 40 million. Would the English teacher on here agree ?
Sven Asai
That’s just only the uppermost atom of the tip of the iceberg. Now they have caught that woman with that little test balloon and probably a thousands of similar ones come through anyway, but that’s still nothing. While they are such busy checking the luggage of everyone and measuring how thick the children book covers they have no time and resources left to check and catch the real big deliveries, in ships, containers , big airfreight, machine parts and all such. There are kilotons moved all over the planet and those mafias and syndicates laugh their mind out if you manage to sometimes catch someone like that woman at that airport. That’s only camouflage for keeping the big streams out of attention and news. It doesn’t matter so much if you put her into prison now or not.
Mocheake
Some random person gives you a backpack with two books inside as "souvenirs" and you accept it and leave, no questions asked? Yeah, right. Make sure she gets a sentence the same as a non-Japanese would get.
Disillusioned
saying that a foreigner at a hotel in Dubai handed her a backpack containing the two books as souvenirs
A likely fickle story for a drug smuggler. She didn't think a 'foreigner' giving her two childrens' books was unusual? She didn't think the covers being a centimeter thick was unusual? However, the real question is, how much cash was she promised for smuggling the drugs?
Zeram1
I've always said that there are book smart people and then there are street smart ones, and sometimes the two do not intersect. She is a "literal" example of this notion.
Paul Scott
This article implies that had they simply been better at hiding they never would have been caught. Are Japan's border detection methods really so horrible?
rgw1
But not the children’s book.
Chico3
Or worse, Malaysia or Singapore.
Monty
This article is again completely bad written and leave many questions open.
that a foreigner at a hotel in Dubai handed her a backpack containing the two books as souvenirs.
What does that exactly mean? Does she pledge innocent?
If yes...
Does she know that foreigner?
Two books as a souvenir...for whom?
In case she didn't know that foreigner, who the hell is so stupid to take a backpack from a person, you do not know, and bring for this person children books as a souvenir into japan?
And to whom should she give these books as a souvenir?
During a baggage inspection, customs officers found two children’s books with their back and front covers bulging one centimeter thick.
Bulging one centimeter thick...didn't she recognize that?
I want to know if this woman pledges guilty or not guilty.
Yubaru
So, the UAE doesnt have drug dogs or do screening of carry on luggage there? One would think that she would have been caught before she even flew.
Goes to show that "age" doesnt automatically give someone common sense! Another "heiwa boke" Japanese while in gaikokuland!
Michael Machida
Harumi Miyauchi is an Executive in Japan?!
WA4TKG
Kiss the rest of your life goodby, and be glad they didn't catch you in Dubai.
John Brown
Oopsie Daisies! やばい!
Daninthepan
Throw the book at her.