Steve Jobs carried 'ninja throwing stars' in hand luggage Steve Jobs has vowed never to visit Japan again after being prevented from leaving the country with a set of ninja throwing stars, according to a local magazine. The Apple CEO apparently had a set of shuriken in his carry-on luggage when he was returning from a family vacation by private jet in July, according to SPA magazine …
Business w£$%ers don't do luggage!!
They push the boundaries of hand baggage with their carefully measured wheely cases which they then cram into an entire overhead locker, (take their time over it as well, Mr Burns arms are not good for this) then when they get off the plane they trip you wheeling their very light bag (so light even your little sister could carry it, just not them) up the boarding corridor.
This saves them 5 minutes of crucial circle-jerk-meeting time not waiting at baggage reclaim.
(a) Any person in this state who does any of the following is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year or in the state prison:
(1) Manufactures or causes to be manufactured, imports into the state, keeps for sale, or offers or exposes for sale, or who gives, lends, or possesses any cane gun or wallet gun, any undetectable firearm, any firearm which is not immediately recognizable as a firearm, any camouflaging firearm container, any ammunition which contains or consists of any flechette dart, any bullet containing or carrying an explosive agent, any ballistic knife, any multiburst trigger activator, any nunchaku, any short-barreled shotgun, any short-barreled rifle, any metal knuckles, any belt buckle knife, any leaded cane, any zip gun, any shuriken, any unconventional pistol, any lipstick case knife, any cane sword, any SHOBI ZUE, any air gauge knife, any writing pen knife, any metal military practice handgrenade or metal replica handgrenade, or any instrument or weapon of the kind commonly known as a blackjack, slungshot, billy, sandclub, sap, or sandbag
Source: http://ag.ca.gov/firearms/dwcl/12020.php
AC: cause don't want to mess with Ninja-Steve
In California (most cities, anyhow) it's legal to concealed carry any length of folding blade knife, even those with spring assist opening. And it's one of the few states that allows real switch blades (limited to 2" blades.) In most cities (Not Los Angeles) it's even legal to open carry a sword, or multiple swords. Granted, that probably won't stop the cops from asking what the hell you're doing with a sword, and maybe just confiscating it to be on the safe (and illegal) side.
AC, I'm sure he knows it's normally 'Mak' in non-kanji, and was making a funny. 'Mac' - Steve Jobs, geddit?
I thought it was Frank Dux who'd introduced Dim Mak into the ninja pantheon, with his brick trick...
As a fellow Bujinkan student, I would say koppo is about as close as you get. Never studied under Soke Hatsumi, but met him twice, absolute gent. You're very lucky to have had the chance to learn from him.
AC as I'm wearing my shinobi shozoku as I type... ;-)
At Narita. I had bought a small shuriken in Kamakura as a gift for my daughter, who is into such things. packed it up against a stainless steel business card case. Was surprised they found it.
The security folk were impeccably polite, but weren't going to let me through with the thing. I asked "Can I mail it?" She asked for my ticket (!) -- studied it carefully (why?) then said "Yes. Follow, please." Led me to the escalator down into that huge mall under the airport, showed me on a directory where the post office was. Made sure I knew how to get there, and how to get to my gate afterwards. She'd checked the ticket to be sure I had time.
At the post office, they were also impeccably polite; helped me through all the paperwork - net result -- I mailed the shuriken back to USA for <$5.00
I suspect this is a case of Mr Jobs stumbling over his ego. It's deservedly large -- but must be hard to drag around everywhere.
Story's been debunked, apparently. Can we have an update? Thought not. Congratulations are in order to the Reg, though, for continuing with its successful policy of generating clicks by mining the rich seam of readers who seem hapless in the face of their Freudian relationship of antipathy with Apple and Jobs and will fall over each other to click on anything even vaguely related in order to post a comment about how much they hate (want to have sex with) Jobs.
PS: No, I don't have a Freudian relationship with Apple myself, although I do have one with the idiot segment of the Reg commentardship. I hate (want to have sex with) all of them.
Paris, because Freudian.
I * think* most US jurisdictions treat "martial arts weapons" (from nunchaku to shuriken, etc.) a bit like I believe the UK treats firearms: you can carry them to and from the dojo, concealed, and had better be prepared to explain that you teach / train w/ them, etc. That was also true in CA when I lived there, I think, but if you're caught casually walking around Cupertino w/ them, (especially these days when the laws on such things have tightened) I suspect you'd have a lot of "splaining" to do.
Assault weapons in the US though, are not a problem....
As much as Jobs is a jerk, why the hell does he need to go through a security checkpoint to fly on a private jet that he undeniably owns. Since US import law is not a concern of the Japanese security, it's insanely ridiculous that there is any item that they should stop him from bringing on board his own plane.
I think I would be pretty angry too if something like this happened to me. Except maybe I would try to bring on a tiger, a flamethrower and a case of those $300 melons. What's the point of being stupidly rich and not being completely dumb about it?
What is to stop someone (read: Would be terrorist), hiring a private jet, walking through carrying weapons, and claiming "Its my jet why cant i take them on?". If they're allowed through what is to stop those weapons being quietly handed over to "colleagues" who are boarding regular flights and thus allowing a terrorist incident.
If he was flying from a private airfield, then it would be a different story but then as they as a general rule do not have security checkpoints and rely on tip offs to catch people smuggling contraband. As this story specifically says he was at a security checkpoint which implies that he was flying from a public airport and so would be mingling with mere mortals in the airport (it takes time to walk to the VIP lounge after all!) before boarding his aircraft...
So good job to Japanese border police - Job well done!
i can't imagine the airport staff at narita dealing with such a high profile person in such a way
having taken swords through narita a number of times the only problem was to provide evidence that they were shin-to and not culteral assets. each time the staff were incredibly helpful and extremely polite.
shuriken (or more likely shaken) would have been placed in the check in or given in the care of the flight staff
pirate cos pirates like swords but not ninjas
Perhaps Steve should stop shipping Apple products to Japan. Either they'll relent from having the next piece of iJunk withheld from their possession and ship him his death stars, or he'll be doing the whole country a big favor and nobody from the Japanese government will question Steve Jobs' luggage contents again.
Just remember what country introduced, and continues to push petty security restrictions and global paranoia...
Hell, I can't even take a 125g jar or marmite in hand luggage... Attempts to argue the 125g is a measurement of mass and not volume, and the restriction is 100ml of volume fall of deaf ears too.
Have you noticed the intelligence level of most airport security guards? The fact they know which way to hold the metal detector correctly is a constant source of amazement to me and gives me hope that one day we will have our monkey butlers...
They would never understand the difference betwen mass and volume...
1) Pay an offshore tabloid news firm to run a verging-on-believable outrageous story about one's own celebrity
2) Disclaim the event, courteously
3) Reap the gains in popularity, as people run on and on about it... until the next "big news" thing, sure. If it results in a net popularity gain, that's return on investment.
I honestly don't believe Apple would have to stoop to that, today, or ever would - they're far too focused on aesthetics to ever stoop to something so crass as a publicity stunt...one might suppose.
Some other firms might feel as that it would serve them, to try such a "vapor" publicity stunt. Maybe it would even be entertaining.
....just throwing a bone out there, in a direction generally towards the west coast of the states. That should cover both Microsoft and Yahoo.
In full disclosure: I do not own any stock in any publicly traded Asian-island tabloid magazines, and neither, in Microsoft nor Yahoo Inc.
Mine's the one with a biography by PT Barnum in the pocket.
Anonymous, because it is.
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