Isn't this a little... arbitrary to be receiving such scrutiny...? There have to be better things the Japanese police could be doing then trying to charge a pop star with a traffic violation...

i love how the police are "raiding" Ayu's avex office and people are mostly concerned with the fact that Yahoo used a comparatively unattractive picture of her.

umm.. why don't they use recent pic or something xD

LOL so true

Here in California, the police have been really alert, springing tickets on the littlest traffic violations in order to bring in revenue for the state since voters approved a budget reform/cut/whatever (not sure of the term, don't like politics :P) a while ago. Maybe the Tokyo police are in the same situation or something?

I really hope this doesn't create negative publicity for Ayu, though.

^probably.. the government needs money!

Whatever, it's not like she was wandering the streets of Tokyo drunk and nude. ;)

a raid...? wtf!

Why do they have to "raid" the office like they're trafficking drugs or something, geez.

I think we should all calm down and look it at logically. By raid I'm pretty sure they don't mean the special police forces came with guns blazing, door rams, shields, and w/e else they might use to raid the place of a criminal (flashbangs and tear gas perhaps?).

The way this article is "sensationally written" is the problem. I'm sure the police arrived at the agency and requested a search for material or documents (or lack thereof) that would incriminate her violation of the law that day. It makes perfect sense why'd they take this route in their investigation but I still think they are over reacting "just a little" over a traffic violation. Somewhere deep inside I feel that if this person who violated the law didn't go by the name of "Ayumi Hamasaki", they wouldn't be this darn serious about going after that person. Perhaps the legal system sees this as a good opportunity to "set an example" and show how "diligent" it is in bringing wrongdoers to "justice".

One last thing: I think that picture looks very sexy. I can't look at it for more than 5 seconds without having my hormones act up.

LOL people...don't be too naive :laugh There's a reason why they chose a bad picture, and there's really not much to wonder "why". That's a tricky resource in journalism. When you want to bring some news into a negative light, specially to those involved in the bad news, they try to put pictures as raw and unproduced as possible, so that it might cause some "anger" towards the "criminals" for those reading the news. When a politician is involved in huge scandals here in Brazil, they put his picture in the main page of the most famous news magazines, with his face asll sweaty and all pores visible so that it will cause a disgusting feeling for those reading. When they want to bring a news that a woman is incredible beautiful, they photoshop her to have crystal clear skin and amke an excellent job on the make up so that they can really sell what they're implying.

Seems like 'raid' was supposed to be like 'gang up on' instead.. haha.

Hmm...raid sounds strange. Maybe it was a translation error or something? Unlikely, but maybe. And I think that's a cute picture of Ayu.

This might be a scandal, but at least it isn't about women's amniotic fluid rotting at 35!

Hahahaha do I have bad tastes? Based on what you just wrote about putting a person into the most negative light possible, you'd think they choose a more grotesque picture of her lolol. I mean she could definitely look better but it's not the absolute worse I've seen of her heh.

Also, not only that but the way they write the article to make it seem worse than it really is with the clear intent of moving copies. If I'm not mistaken that's one of the main characteristics defining a tabloid. Quite unfortunate, really. I'm going to wait for some more articles to pop up and see what they have to say. Hopefully they give me pure untainted journalism.

i dont like that picture. XD but hope all this gets resolved ..

I'm hating the media at the moment -__-;

I know, the picture might not be great, but I agree with you - it's not the worst. I'd say they don't really want to make ayu the ugliest villain with such news, though they also don't want to put her into a good light either. That picture seems to bring mixed feelings among ayu fans, what to say the casual reader who isn't that much into ayu. :laugh My example was that of an extreme case though so that people could get the picture. It's just like when you advertise a product there's a whole "science" behind the advertisement so that people will feel attracted to the product and favor it over adversary companies products LOL

:roflmao

I completely agree.

I thought this whole issue was over with!

Who's to say they aren't already doing the better things out there? Just because ayu is a celebrity and avex is a rich record comapny doesn't mean the law shouldn't be enforced towards them. It actually makes me glad to see that in Japan they aren't all sweety when it comes to celebrities. If anyone's to blame, maybe it's the media that is blowing this out of proportion. You can't blame the police for doing their jobs. In my country it gets to the point that media lick celbrities so much that they give special time in TV shows so that the celbrities can defend themselves and they even try to clean their images, and osmetimes they've made some pretty foul crimes like driving drunk and hitiing and killing people while driving. And then people go: [ "aww" poor him is suffering because of the law, now his image is tarnished]. To the hell with hypocrisy! ayu is not to blame for this incident but saying this should just be overlooked is a little too much. They have already decided that something illegal happened in that event, so nothing fairer than doing a close investigation on the matter. Putting this to rest would be an offense to japan's citizen's who pays taxes to have their rights assured. it's pretty annoying that media puts a lot od sensasionalism over this, but then, that's not the police fault.

I think the reason people, myself included, are saying this is a waste of time or this is getting out of hand is because it's already been established that they didn't have a permit. Doing a raid proves nothing but dragging Avex, Ayu's staff and Ayu herself through the mud. It seems like the police or treating them as nothing more than scapegoats just to "make an example" of them, which I think is a bit ridiculous... Of course they have to do their job, so I guess a lot of the blame for this blow up is the media. Nothing new there.

I don't like celebrity preferential treatment any more than the next (sensible) person, but I don't think that applies here. Ayu didn't do something illegal herself--she just showed up. It was up to the staff or the management to get the proper papers in order, and they didn't. So it's not like she got away with something like, say, public drunkenness or running around without clothes, if you catch my drift *coughSMAPguycough*.

Of course, anything for the ratings~