The Client always comes first!

After a year of silence, the trial of actor/singer Manabu Oshio has now gotten started for real. Those of you who either follows the news in Japan or my blog might remember the two big celebrity scandals of last year; former teen idol Noripi getting caught with amphetamine and this actor/singer Oshio having a small Ecstasy party with a bar hostess who ended up OD:ing on the stuff and he, fearing for his future career, called his managers instead of the ambulance. You can catch up on the details here.

As the trial now is going ahead at full steam, the details are now getting revealed and it's pretty amazing to hear about the dedication that some managers here in Japan seem to be showing to their clients. It seem like the development over time looked something like this:

6PM - The girl is getting a bad reaction from the Ecstasy and loosing consciousness (according to his own witness, Oshio performed first aid to try and save her, but didn't call an ambulance)

7PM - Oshio calls his manager to tell him that a girl has died and that he needs help

~8PM - Oshio's Chief Manager and assistant manager arrives at the flat, seeing the dead girl and together with Oshio they decide to have a little meeting to plan out the approach, when asked why Oshio didn't call an ambulance he replied that it would ruin his career if it came out (yeah, I think so too)

9PM - The dealer and a friend of Oshio's also joined the gang (5 living men and one girl now in the flat), the friend arrives on the scene and is the first one to actually call for an ambulance

In the meeting around 8PM, they first discussed a plan A that would entail:

"Chief Manager brought a girl over and had sex with her and then she died" - Conveniently this story doesn't feature Manabu at all, and apart from the hideous insult to the sexual performance of the Chief Manager, they decided to ditch that plan since an examination would show that it was indeed Oshoi who had sex with the girl before the problems started...

Then they moved to plan B

"Oshio had sex with the girl but then he had to leave for work and Chief Manager came and found her dead"

Unfortunately also this plan fell on the fact that the building had a surveillance camera and the story would fall apart upon closer examination.

When the ambulance finally was called about 4 hours too late, Oshio made a quick exit but telling his managers to come up with an alternative plan that would not include him doing anything bad. As now is clear, they did not have enough imagination to do this and now they are very actively witnessing against Oshio. Although guilty of unethical and immoral activities they are not on trial for any criminal charges since the drug was not supplied by them.

The take-away from this? I need a manager with the same dedication as these guys! Ok, they did roll over in the end, but that they even discussed that one of the manager's should take the fall is pretty impressive stuff. I guess they realized that the business might dry up a bit if the key money maker ends up in jail...