crime (Page 67)
July and August tend to be the seasons where summer festivals get kicked into full swing. Much like festivals in any country, the festivities are often accompanied by various stalls selling drinks and snacks. Other stalls can be found offering games that you know are probably rigged, but just can’t help trying.
For one such stall runner, 45-year-old Tsutomu Morikawa, poor price planning led to a date with the police.
Of the many things that China is known for, one of them is most certainly bootlegging. Sometimes it works to our smalltime benefit by introducing us to almost familiar films and imitation iPhones, but only trouble can be bought when China’s system begins circulating bootleg bills.
Recently, counterfeit money in China has reached a point where not only are people being fooled by fake cash, money-checking machines are too, as Chinese ATMs appear to be distributing bogus bills to honest civilians.
Being a teacher is tough. In a sincere effort to mold young minds, many educators have to endure strict regulations, tight budgets, and the unreasonable demands of monster parents. It’s too much for some to handle, as we can see in the case of Yusei Yoshikawa, the 26-year-old teacher who has recently been racking up an arrest per month for vandalizing and robbing his own school.
Customs authorities in South Korea are pleased to announce that they have cracked a smuggling ring in which gold was brought into the country via people’s cracks. Police have issued warrants for the arrest of the alleged mastermind of the crime, a 47-year-old man going by the name of Zou, along with eight accomplices.
A young man from Nanjing, China, has been arrested after stealing more than 800 social science textbooks, history compendiums and poetry books from a book shop in the town. When questioned by police, the young man maintained that he was searching for ‘the meaning of life’ within the books’ pages.
Last month a man was caught red-handed groping an innocent office lady on a train in Kyoto, in violation of the region’s laws against causing public disturbances. The man was put under immediate arrest, and while this admittedly unfortunate event may seem a bit too tame to be newsworthy, the offender was none other than the head patrol officer of Osaka’s police force! Apparently, this groping incident was far from the first for this once-respected officer.
Tokyo police announced this week that, for the first time since they started keeping detailed statistics, the number of elderly shoplifters has exceeded the number of juveniles. So much for the “you kids these days” rant, Oba-chan.
Now, we all know better than to trust promises of easy money, right? Well, apparently not everyone does, as a recent piece of news involving an unsuccessful scam attempt here in Japan clearly demonstrates. The whole affair actually has Japanese internet users shaking their heads in disbelief, and one thing is clear — there’s not going to be much public sympathy for the intended victim in this particular case. Once you hear the story, you’ll probably understand why.
The latest bizarre crime story to come out of China is the terrifying and sad case of a woman whose child was abducted, seemingly right out of her belly.
Police in Sakai City, Osaka are currently investigating a 46-year-old man found hanged in an public housing complex apartment that wasn’t his. The actual owner, a 21-year-old man, has since disappeared. This strange story all started when the young tenant received a phone call from an unidentified man speaking in a Tokyo area dialect that said “someone is dead in your room.”
Some Tokyo department stores are facing legal allegations of selling outrageously expensive items to customers who clearly have Alzheimer’s or other mental disabilities related to old age.
The story broke with a Yomiuri Shinbun article detailing a court case brought about by the brother of a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Despite the diagnosis and clear symptoms, she was nevertheless allowed to buy a wide variety of extravagant goods – often the same item multiple times – from a Tokyu department store.
On 17 June, 57 men and women between the ages of 16 and 26 received a shock when they were arrested for several traffic violations such as running red lights and weaving through traffic.
The charges come as no surprise seeing as they were participating in bōsō which is en masse reckless riding and a primary activity of bōsōzoku, Japan’s version of biker gangs. However, the shock came from everyone getting arrested and charged nearly two years after committing the act.
It was reported on 17 June that Yoshiyuki Ikutani of Tokyo had been arrested on suspicion of the embezzlement of his former employers, Microsoft Japan. Luckily he was easy to find having already been charged with the embezzlement of his former employers over at a now-defunct subsidiary of IBM.
According to Japan’s National Police Agency, the number of shoplifting cases on record has been at a steady high for the past 10 years or so. In 2012 there were a total of 135,000 documented cases nation-wide. Granted, Japan’s crime rate is less than one-fourth that of the United States according to some sources, but it still ranks in as having the sixth highest crime rate in the world. For shoplifting in particular, the problem appears to lie less with the will of the law enforcement and more with the attitudes of society. Many individuals will become angry and defensive on behalf of the thieving criminals, as though having beat the shop’s security system makes it acceptable to have stolen something in the first place! This has caused quite a few problems for security officials.
Bulletin boards in Japan are hot with rumour and speculation today after videos recorded by an as yet unidentified Japanese male threaten random knife attacks on members of the public at stations in Japan, with Fukuoka’s Hakata Station ultimately named as the spot where the attack will take place.
Although neither the following article nor the videos within it contain any graphic imagery, some readers may nevertheless find their content disturbing.
Two youths were arrested by Aichi Prefecture police on June 11 after they placed a plastic bag full of dog feces and lit fireworks inside a police box, showering the small room with the bag’s contents.
At approximately 10am on Wednesday, 5 June, Suma Municipal Sea Fishing Park in Kobe became a crime scene after a 68-year-old fisherman made a once in a lifetime catch.
To pull off the perfect crime one has to minimize risk while maximizing the yields. If you’re going to rob a bank you’ll have to put up with safes, cameras, random customers, polite staff and a quick police response.
So who is sitting on a goldmine but least expecting to get robbed? While not as expensive as more authentic melons, watermelons go for a rather high price in Japan. However, you’d have to be crazy to try and steal a bunch of watermelons… Right?
On 16 May Kumiko Osawa was found guilty by Sapporo District Court after pleading guilty to the assisted suicide of her 70-year-old mother. According to the prosecution, Osawa had agreed to kill her mother after the two nearly ran out of money. In addition, about one year prior to this they had refused to accept government assistance as a matter of pride.
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