Ura Hello Work chapter 10 – KOROBIYA!
10 – DRUG COURIER (転び屋, KOROBIYA, literally ‘delivery merchant’)
RISK:***
SALARY:***
HARD LABOR:***
ILLEGALITY:*****
I have an aquaintance, Mr. Wellnow, (27, not his real name) who happens to be a self-proclaimed “professional korobiya.” Originally, he just liked going on vacations. On one of his trips abroad, he acquired a taste for narcotics, mainly Marijuana, but also stimulants, LSD, extacy, and “whatever was around.” For the sake of his drug-loving Japanese friends, once every three months he goes to India or Cambodia, buys high-quality drugs from the locals, and smuggles it back into Japan. Drugs that cost $3 over there, he can sell for $50 over here- nice work if you can get it! At first he was just doing it for walking-around money, but soon he found he could make a living at it. Our interview was the first time I’d seen him in who-knows-how-many months, and when we met, I noticed that something was different about him. He looked like a very confident and outgoing junkie, but also there was something cold about him – a kind of a chilly, paranoid atmosphere around him. I asked him “Have you been doing shabu (speed,sometimes combined with LSD) ?” He just shrugged. “It looks like you haven’t been sleeping,” I continued. He said he’d been up over 24 hours on the stuff – sleeplessness was a side-effect. It was with this awkward ice-breaker that our interview began.
I WANT TO GET MORE SOPHISTICATED ABOUT MY SMUGGLING.
“In my case, I usually bring back ‘chocolate’ from India.” Perhaps because of the shabu, Mr. Wellnow kept swiveling his head back and forth, and began to speak very rapidly. Even if I didn’t ask questions, he kept on talking, telling me how to smuggle drug after drug. It was definitely the easiest interview of this book!
“There’s rules to mochikomu (持ち込む： smuggling), but I don’t usually bother to follow them. For instance, it’s commonplace to hide the stuff up your asshole, or swallow a condom full of it. But that’s kind of gross, isn’t it? It’s not for me. It’s my policy to do things the smart way, as much as possible.”
According to Mr. Wellnow, the most important point to keep in mind when you’re mochikomu-ing is: “Don’t appear to be a supsicious person.” Even if you put stuff in your butt, if they investigate you enough, they’ll find it. The trick is to behave so you don’t get investigated in the first place.
“You should act like a legitimate, boring businessman. Whenever I go to the airport, I always wear a suit. And I don’t take any drugs for one week prior to going to the airport. That way I look and feel very ‘clean.’ That’s pretty crucial. Always travel business-class, And when they ask why you’re traveling, always reply, ‘business.’ Beyond that, I try to adjust my body-language: I look like a very conservative, inflexible guy. That kind of simple disguise alone significantly reduces the risk!
“If you look like a hippy and go abroad a lot, you’re basically saying, ‘Please strip-search me’! I’ve been doing this dozens of times, and have yet to be searched even once. Customs is like that – always going by a profile. They’ll let a guy like me through without even slowing down, but they’ll pull someone else into the ‘special room’ just for looking weird. They get the wrong guy!”
I asked Mr. Wellnow if he knew what went on in the ‘special room’ – the room that us normal tourists never think about. He’s never been taken in there, but several of his ‘co-workers’ have been in there. Of course, they were all innocent. In the room, usually a pair of very enthusiastic customs workers will start by emptying out the luggage, item by item. They don’t care if the clothes or whatever is dirty, they look at everything. Cigarettes are pulled apart, one by one, to see if they contain drugs. Really hard-core customs officers will even pry apart the filters, to see if there’s stuff in there. (the friend who experienced this was quite surprised!) “People who are actually smuggling, we’d never even think of half that stuff! But the customs guys, they got more ideas than we do, and they’re looking! Jewels are gouged out of necklaces to see if drugs are inside. Sneaker toes are probed. That is the craftsmanship of the customs-people. Plastic bottles full of water are tested to see if there’s drugs dissolved in it. One acquaintance of mine DID get nabbed that way. So, you guys out there, nobody do that! Testing water for speed is the new rage in the customs-search world.”
By the way, none of his friends reported having their butt-hole searched. There’s a rumor that if your butt is searched but they don’t find anything, in that case they have to pay you $500, but none of Wellnow’s friends got the opportunity to collect. At any rate, they scatter the clothes all over, and the suspect has to pick it up afterwards.
Mr. Wellnow explains how he prepares his drugs for smuggling:
“First, saran-wrap the hashish tightly, so there’s no wrinkles or cracks. Then get some macadamia nut chocolate, and melt all of it. Then put the hash into the plastic tray that the chololate came in, and pour the melted chocolate around the hashish, totally enclosing it, (you’ll want the hash to be about half the volume of the box, so you’ll end up pouring in only half the chocolate!) and wait for it to dry. Afterwards, shrink-wrap the box with plastic so it looks like it’s never been opened in the first place! And then you’re done. If it doesn’t look suspicious then they won’t even search you for it. Just walk through the airport inspection! La de da!”
Hmmm, don’t you ever think, ‘I could just throw the drugs away and not risk arrest?’
“No, the risk is the fun part! Not that I don’t ever get nervous – but because I do! The thrill when I walk up to the gate! Will I get busted, or will I outwit them again? My asshole clenched tight. Even after I get safely on the plane, my stomach hurts from the stress.”
TO REDUCE YOUR RISKS, JUST SEND THE SHIT BY MAIL!
Mr. Wellnow explains another technique he uses:
“This scam is good for you beginners out there: If you do this carefully with all the precautions, chances of getting caught are next to zero, and it requires very little effort on your part. It’s not suitable for things with strong odors like ‘chocolate,’ but works fine with speed, LSD, or extacy. There’s nothing to it! In the foreign country, just buy a damn envelope and some stamps. Then wrap the drugs in a vinyl bag and wrap that in a letter you’ve written. They might check letters at customs, but only if it smells funny.
“Here’s the part where you have to be really careful: the reciever’s address. If you’re a dummy, you might use your own. Try doing that more than once- you’ll get pinched for sure! Some people use their friend’s address, but then their friends start bragging about it, and the whole sneaky ruse becomes meaningless. The best thing to do is find an apartment where no one is living, and use that apartment’s post-box for the reciever’s address! Just look around many apartment lobbies until you find a post-box overflowing with junk mail, that’s the easiest way to find a vacant apartment. Just in case the customs agents discover the drugs, put a fake name for both sender and receiver. Then mail it from the foreign country. Now, while you’re over there, maybe someone’s moved into the apartment, and then you ‘re out of luck. But in my career, that’s only happened once.
“Once you’re back in Japan, you have to be careful when you go to the post-box. You can’t ‘stake it out’ for days at a time – that’s the most dangerous solution! Recently there have been some dudes who got hella caught doing that kind of stake-out. Be subtle about it. If you do it right, though this is the safest way: you’re never in direct contact with the drugs when they cross the border, and you have no relationship to the receiving address. It’s pretty untraceable.
“Another method is, sometimes the local ‘outfits’ can make arrangements for your smuggling convinience. For instance, in a certain neighborhood in Calcutta, the old guy at the travel agency will hook you up with a false-bottom suitcase, and have it delivered to your hotel with the drugs already sealed in it. This costs several hundred dollars, though, and besides I prefer to do everything myself. But for guys who are afraid of risk, and want to err on the side of caution, I’d recommend that method. The old guy has been doing it for years and years, and apparently his success rate is 100%, so why not give him a try?”
YOU CAN’T BEAT THE CANADIANS
But even Mr. Wellnow, with all his sophisticated precautions, can’t hold a candle to my other smuggler friend: a Canadian named Tim (30s, his real name). I met Tim first in Vancouver. Vancouver isn’t as wild as Holland, but maruijuana is legal there. I gave Tim my contact information when I left, but assumed I’d never hear from him again. About two or three months later, I got a phone call: “Hi, it’s Tim! I’m in Japan. Want to buy some pot?” He was so candid about it, it was scandalous. I told him, “Jesus, man! This is Japan! You can’t just talk like that!” We agreed to meet in a public park in Ikebukuro. He beckoned me into a public toilet, and pulled out a bunch of weed. “This!” he proclaimed in broken Japanese. I’d never met someone so foolishly bold: It was noon, and the park was full of kids playing. I told him, “Christ, man, you’ll get arrested! How did you mochikomu?” “I just put it in my pocket.” I didn’t believe him. That was either genius or sheer stupidity.
“You mean, that’s it? Put it in your pocket and walk onto the plane?” He just nodded. “No, man, I do it all the time.” It seemed that he really believed he was doing nothing wrong. He acted innocent because he honestly felt innocent, so the airport security never thought to search him. I mischeviously decided to set up a meeting between Tim and Mr. Wellnow. When Wellnow heard about Tim’s mochikomu ‘technique,’ he was crushed. It seemed that all his meticulous planning and elaborate precautions had been for nothing. Both Wellnow and myself felt that “when it comes to smuggling, you can’t beat the Canadians.”
Thanks to Mr. Wellnow’s suspiciously fast speech, our interview only took 30 minutes. He looked miserably exhausted, like he wanted to sleep but was unable. I suggested that he try some Halcyon, but he said that it wouldn’t affect him in his current ‘condition.’ I warned him to be careful, that he was a wreck – I couldn’t imagine him smuggling anything in that condition without getting arrested. Then we said our good-byes. It seemed that my advice had gone in one ear and out the other – he didn’t seem to care if he was caught, the most dangerous way for an outlaw to make a living, I’d say! I hope that next time I see him, it won’t be behind bars.
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Loving these. This was a great one.
Best post yet!
Not bad at all. It’s good to see you posting these again.
Yeah. Thanks for these new posts. Fun, fun. Translation work is hard yo. Ok. Catch you around.
Goddamn! Fellow canucks are gonna make me have to watch my ass next time I go through customs.