Updates to Sakai Noriko's case - 8 Aug 09

Sakai Noriko who had been known as a cheerful idol and a leading mama-idol figure in recent years, is said to have displayed signs of her widely different personal life which deviates from her clean image. Her last work assignment was the shooting of the CM for "Kake no Ue no Ponyo" in mid July. At that time, she looked haggard and had lost a lot of weight. The most shocking thing was the lotus tattoo she had on her left calf which displayed very openly. To prevent this tattoo from appearing in the CM, the staff had to do some editing to the footage. Apparently, she had this tattoo done about 5 years ago which made her agency quite unhappy. In fact, she had hid it from her agency for as long as until February last year when they happened to see it during her concert. Besides that, Sakai was also unusually excited at work on several occasions which led the people who had worked with her to link that behvaiour to the drug abuse habit rumoured to be going on for a couple of years.

The media has also made some shocking revelations about the events surrounding Sakai this week. First of all, the friend whom Sakai left her son in the care of is said to be her husband's lover. Initially, this friend was Sakai's friend and she later got involved with Takasou. Surprisingly, Sakai didn't divorce her husband and continued to be friends with this woman. In addition, she even brought her son to meet this friend on a regular basis thus resulting in her son being quite close to this lady. On the day when Sakai handed her son to her friend, she also passed 500,000 yen in cash to her which investigators believe to be living expenses for her son.

Subsequently, Sakai was said to have rushed home to pack her things and she was seen leaving her apartment in the early morning of 3 Aug with a big bag. She then proceeded to withdraw a total of 400,000 yen in cash through the ATM over 2 times. Sakai was also seen to have gone to a hypermart to purchase large amounts of underwear, cosmetics, instant food products and mineral water which could signify that she was prepared to hide for a long period of time.

Meanwhile, police had searched Sakai's apartment where they found a small amount of stimulants and some equipment used in the consumption of such drugs. The DNA found on these items matched those of Sakai's. Apparently, Sakai was in such a hurry to escape that she did not dispose or bring these items with her which were found in a pouch. In addition, Takasou also said in his statement that he rarely went to Sakai's apartment in Tokyo and the drugs found in the apartment belonged to Sakai.

At the moment, there are no useful leads to locate Sakai and the police suspect that someone could have assisted in her escape or could be hiding her. As such, they are going to question her friends and family in an attempt to find Sakai's whereabouts. The police have reason to be uptight because of the fact that Sakai's escape could be an attempt to get herself off the hook. This is because a first-time user of stimulants will need about 2 days for the traces of the drug to be removed from the body system. Given the fact that Sakai is said to be a regular user, she would take about 1 week or 10 days for the drug to be completely removed from the body. If so, even if she surrenders herself after this period, the police would not be able to find traces of the drug abuse in her urine test. Although they can resort to testing her hair for the drug abuse, this will require a body search warrant which is unlikely to be given out if the urine test is negative. In addition, they are also worried if Sakai will resort to suicide especially if she succumbs to the pressure of the big-scale manhunt for her.

It is also revealed that Sakai's younger brother was just arrested last month on the same charge in Fukuoka. Her brother, Sakai Takeshi (30) was arrested on 17 July in Fukuoka on the charge of extortion and he was a member of the yakuza organization, The Yamaguchi Group. Sakai Takeshi had threatened a friend and made him surrender his car worth 200,000 yen and cash of 3,000 yen on 29 June. When the police arrested him for extortion, they found that Sakai Takeshi was behaving strangely and decided to make him undergo an urine test which he tested positive. The younger Sakai has since been charged in court.