For Jake Adelstein's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Ever since Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy in February 2014, investigators have been puzzled by the disappearance of virtual currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars from its digital vaults. Mt. Gox, which claimed it once hosted around 80 percent of bitcoin ...
The Japanese underworld loves gold — it has been the analog bitcoin of crime syndicates in recent years. The origins of gold are difficult to trace, and the material is easy to convert into cash and store. Crime syndicates are increasingly smuggling it, stealing ...
On May 22, the Yomiuri Shimbun published a curious article about Kihei Maekawa, a former administrative vice education minister who has said that he is willing to testify under oath about the Kake Gakuen scandal dogging Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Yomiuri Shimbun published its ...
Last month, three masked robbers grabbed a suitcase stuffed with cash from a businessman who had just withdrawn the money from a bank in Fukuoka. The businessman is believed to have been planning to use the ¥380 million ($3.5 million) to buy gold. In December, ...
The National Police Agency announced last month that the number of crime syndicate members fell below 20,000 in 2016. The figure dropped by about 2,000 from a year earlier to 18,100, the lowest since comparable data became available in 1958, the National Police Agency said. ...
How much time does it take to save a life? Five hours? Five minutes? Five seconds? According to a government white paper on karōshi (death from overwork) in October 2016, more than 20 percent of companies said monthly overtime per employee exceeded 80 hours, a ...
Last month, I withdrew some money — ¥100,000 to be precise — from an ATM near Tokyo's Shibuya Station. I was on my way to a meeting and was in such a hurry that, while remembering to grab my bank card and receipt, I completely ...
Freelance editor Lauren Hardie applied to join a fitness center when visiting Tokyo last summer but, before her membership was accepted, she was asked to sign a special contract that began with the following condition: "I am not a gangster." Hardie is no gangster, but ...
"When you're in the office 20 hours a day, you don't understand what life you're living for anymore. (It's so pathetic) you come to laugh." — Twitter post by Matsuri Takahashi, as reported in the Mainichi Shimbun A week after the above message, Matsuri ...
Two recent domestic cases involving sexual assault illustrate just how far the land of the rising sun is from dealing with crimes against women. Many Americans expressed outrage when former Stanford University swimmer Brock Turner was released from prison after spending three months behind bars ...
