Police said Thursday they have arrested a man on suspicion of airmailing 1 kg of cannabis from Thailand to a Tokyo hotel and another man he allegedly hired to pick it up.
Yukio Nishino, 39, unemployed, booked a Tokyo hotel room in early February and hired Atsushi Tahara, 51, a homeless man, to collect the package, police said.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is investigating whether a smuggling ring in Thailand is involved, as well as who was going to buy the cannabis, police said.
According to police, Nishino airmailed the cannabis because he had friends who were arrested last year at Narita airport with 4 kg of the drug hidden in the shafts of golf clubs.
Nishino on Saturday promised Tahara 50,000 yen if he would pick up the parcel of drugs at the hotel, police said. According to police, 1 kg of cannabis is worth some 5.3 million yen on the street. The parcel arrived at Narita airport in Chiba Prefecture on Jan. 31 after leaving a Bangkok post office a day earlier.
Airport customs officials discovered that the package contained cannabis and police allowed it to be sent on to the hotel.
Tahara, who lives in underground station concourses in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, said Nishino approached him at a pachinko parlor in Tokyo and asked him to collect the package from the hotel, police said.