The story is almost too strange to be true. It sounds like something you might read in the Onion:

An officer at Narita International Airport on Sunday stuffed 142 grams (five ounces) of the drug into the side pocket of a randomly selected black suitcase coming off an overseas flight so that the animal could detect it.

“The dog couldn’t find it and the officer also forgot which bag he put it in,” a customs office spokeswoman said.

“If by some chance passengers find it in their suitcase, we’re asking them to return it,” she said.

The 38-year-old officer was quoted by the spokeswoman as saying: “I knew that using passengers’ bags is prohibited, but I did it because I wanted to improve the sniffer dog’s ability.”

I wonder what other “improvements” will be attempted. I guess it’s a good thing the passenger was entering Tokyo and not outbound to another country for further security tests.