Posts Tagged ‘narita’

Narita helicopter service vs. new Narita Express train

FTV compare’s the new helicopter and rail services to and from Narita airport:

The helicopter flight takes 30 minutes and has nice leather seats with interior decoration by Hermes. A one-way ticket costs 75,000 yen (but a special launch price of 57,000 yen will be in effect until the end of this year).

The new Narita Express NEX E259 trains begin service on October 1st. The trip between Tokyo and the airport takes about an hour, but it will be a far cheaper ride than the helicopter. It will also be equipped with electrical outlets and locks for luggage.

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New Tokyo Helicopter Service

MORI building have announced they will start a helicopter service from mid September shuttling passengers between Narita airport and downtown Tokyo.

Whilst it has been possible to charter a flight from Narita to central Tokyo before, this is believed to be the first time a regular scheduled flight service has been offered. The heliport to be used in Tokyo will be the Ark MORI Building.

The target market is top level executives who are able to pay YEN 50,000 each for a one way flight.  A sleek looking Hermes helicopter that seats 5 has been outfitted for a first class ride.

After leaving from Ark MORI Building the helicopter will land in Chiba about 22 kilometers from Narita airport where a limousine car will be on standby to complete the remaining portion of the trip. It will take approximately 30 minutes from boarding the craft to arriving at Narita airport.

MORI building expect to be able to bring the price down in the future. Maybe they can also find a way to land nearer to the terminal building and make it a 20 minute ride.

[Information Source: Asahi News]

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Contributor Bio: Writer and Photographer, shibuya246 focuses on latest events happening in Japan. Living and working in Shibuya for 20 years this city within the city of Tokyo is always surprising me with new shops, new trends and new places to visit. Through shibuya246.com I hope to introduce you to many of those new and some of the old great places in Shibuya as well as touching on other Japanese related topics.
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Jet vs. Japanese Children

A video clip showing a special event held at Narita Airport on the 15th in which elementary schoolers formed teams and pulled a jet along a runway:

Customs officers punished for planting drugs in passengers’ luggage

Following an investigation into the unorthodox methods used by Japanese customs officials to train their sniffer dogs, it has been revealed that illegal substances have been planted on at least 160 innocent passengers in the past.

In an official press statement Tokyo Customs spokesman Kazutoshi Takahashi said that customs officials have been spiking customers bags since September of last year and that “The three officers apologised and explained that they did it in an effort to boost the dogs’ performance”. “We are deeply sorry that such acts have happened”.

In May this year the practice of deliberately planting illegal substances into passengers bags was exposed when four ounces of cannabis resin were placed inside the luggage of a traveler from Hong Kong. The resin and its unwitting custodian were then “lost”.

All 124 grams were recovered in a Tokyo hotel the following week and the customs officials have been disciplined by their superiors. The officer responsible for losing the hash has been suspended for three months while two other have had 10% salary cuts for three months.

This disciplinary action falls far short of the sentence the officers in question would have received if they had been convicted of distributing illegal substances by Japanese police. A conviction of drug dealing in Japan is notoriously harsh, but would have seemed like a walk in the park compared to their victim’s potential situation.

If the innocent passenger had returned to Hong Kong, or indeed mainland China he could have faced a police force known to use the death penalty to enforce its drug laws.

This series of events has demonstrated no small amount of professional neglect and incompetence on the part of Narita airport staff, but has also shown how easily one customs official can get his hands on significant quantities of illegal substances. Apparently if asked what he was planning to do with it, he either lied or was allowed to carry out his experiment with his superior’s consent. Either way, a rather large hole in internal security has reared its head.

No disciplinary measures have been announced for the dog.

New Keisei Skyliner

Keisei Electric Railways have unveiled a new design for their Skyliner:

The new Skyliner will begin service between Ueno Station and Narita Airport in 2010. With a top speed of 160 km/hour, it will cut the current Skyliner travel time between the airport and Nippori Station by about 15 minutes.

An In-Depth Look At Narita Airport’s Immigration Checkpoints

Here’s a “Super Report” that aired last week on FTV. The report focuses on the security systems in place at Narita Airport’s immigration checkpoint (length: 13 minutes):

A brief translation of a few things mentioned in the video:

• The frightening buzzer that goes off a minute and 40 seconds into the video indicates that there is a suspicious individual at one of immigration booth. In such a case, it is necessary to call in extra staff and bring the foreigner to a back room for questioning. Dubious passports and suspicions about stated reasons for entering Japan are the two main things that trigger such alerts. At peak times, the buzzer goes off almost every minute.

  According to the report, one in ten foreigners called to the back room end up being refused entry to Japan.

• The first foreigner who is called to a back room for questioning is a South Korean woman who is accompanied by a small child. She seems nervous, and it is revealed that she had visited Japan before with her husband and the husband had been forced to return to Korea because he committed a crime. The immigration officials suspect that she may attempt to overstay her tourist visa (such cases are “overwhelming numerous,” claims the narrator), and after questioning she allegedly confesses such an intention. She is refused entry and leaves in tears.
• The second foreigner who is called to the back room is a Filipino man who claims he is coming to Japan to visit his sister, who is married to a Japanese citizen. Immigration officials verify that his sister actually lives in Japan, and he is allowed to enter the country.
• The third foreigner is shown in handcuffs. Apparently he is being forcibly deported for illegally attempting to enter the country as a refugee. (not too sure on the translation here)
• The report mentions the new fingerprinting/photographing system introduced at immigration checkpoints last year. It also mentions that 10,000 foreigners illegally enter Japan a year, 600 of whom are caught at immigration checkpoints. An official claims the fingerprinting system is very useful in catching such illegal entrants.
• The fourth and fifth foreigners called to the back room are two men who suspiciously arrive at the immigration checkpoint at a time when there have been no recent international arrivals. No immigration checkpoint was even in service at the time, so an employee had to rush out and man a booth for them. They were promptly called to the back room for having suspicious passports. Apparently the men had handed over both Sri Lankan passports and Malaysian passports. We are shown that for one of the men, both passports had the same photos, but the names did not match! Their passports are rushed to a special counterfeit document inspection lab, and the Malaysian passports were found to be fakes.

  The men later confessed under interrogation that they had arrived at Narita 12 hours earlier, hoping to meet with a broker that had arranged for them to board a transit flight to Great Britain. Failing to find their broker, they were left with no choice but to head to the immigration checkpoint. The narrator says that such cases are not uncommon. The men in this particular case were eventually deported to Sri Lanka.