Tokyo Reporter Fights Mob

One of the highlights of my recent Tokyo trip was meeting Missouri-born cop reporter Jake Adelstein, who covered police for a daily newspaper in Tokyo, and has run afoul of the mob there.

I didn't want to write anything until this article came out.

You can see why when you read it. Adelstein says he thinks this story may save his life, getting attention on the hit that has been ordered on him, and on the lack of response from law enforcement. I hear other newspapers, including the LA Times, are following the story today.

Adelstein took me and my friends around Tokyo, to a Euro-trash bar opening party and to a quaint jazz club. He had cops living in his house and watching him 24/7....but never mentioned, as he does in this story, that the Japanese mob likes to take out people around their victim as well.

I knew I felt a little twitchy around him for a reason.

Regardless, radio hosts will want to book him when his book comes out...He's a great story teller and has views of Japan that no other American has seen. At his home, he showed me a tape of a mob ceremony that members had to pay $10,000 a piece to view.

Adelstein says the difference between the American and Japanese stock markets is that in Japan stocks are manipulated by the mob. He now has a business investigating companies for potential investors to determine which are mob-owned.

Maybe it's not so different here. But the criminals don't have mob fan clubs here.