Yokohama Customs Office

Posted on 07. Nov, 2006 @ 11:40 pm by in Culture Views: 645

We took at school field trip to the Yokohama customs museum. English link for museum info here.
The customs museum is near the Sakuragicho Minato Mirai area (more or less), down by the water (sorta, check the map). It’s not a place I would have visited on my own, but it was much more interesting than I expected.

There are cool exhibits about busting contraband smugglers.

There were 250 kg of illegal substances behind a fake wall in a container discovered about 6 years ago. These containers are used for shipping things by boat, and a built to be either 25 meters, or 40 meters long according to ISO specifications (apparently). The inspectors noticed that this one appeared a bit shorter than usual from the inside.

250kg of whatever this type of illegal substance is makes for 150億円 (15,000,000,000 dollars?). And it was lost!

That’s enough to get someone fired. This amount of substance could have been used 8,330,000 times. That’s enough to keep Yokohama genki for quite some time…

Apparently bad people also stick contraband into Budweiser cans. What person on the up-and-up would drink that stuff anyway?

On another note…

This is Custom-kun.

He’s the mascot (or image character, as Japanese like to say) for Yokohama Customs.

This guy is tough on crime.

Go visit the Yokohama Customs Museum if you have a chance. Custom-kun is waiting.

Click here for a close up of our furry illegal baggage-catching friend.

Why does custom-kun look like a fat bear-dog?

- Harvey

  • http://pixelscribbles.com/journal Heather Meadows

    Custom-kun = awesome :D

    That sounds like a pretty neat museum.

  • http://www.transpacificradio.com Ken

    Custom-kun is great. I love that he’s locked in that glass box, somehow seems appropriate. Wonder if it’s a fake wall?

    I have to check that place out, thanks for the link.

  • mdchachi

    I think 150億 is more like $150 million.

  • http://www.enyi.org Grace

    Oh my gosh! (;_;) Custom-kun! Why is he in a glass cage? Did someone kidnap him before? Who would ever think of doing such a thing… *twiddles thumbs*

    And unrelated – except that DesignFesta! is supposedly a related post – but I realized recently that I stumbled across their gallery last year in Harajuku. Was very (*_*) about the existence of such a cool place.

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