Tokyo Times

Photographs from a small group of islands

Odd

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Cut to the chase

Lacking excitement (and presumably intelligence), a group of youths falsely reported a crime to the police in order to speed away when they arrived and enjoy the thrill of being chased.

The motorbike riding teens made their mischievous call to the police at 2:20 a.m. on December 4th, saying, “We were robbed of 6,500 yen.” Now it must have been an incredibly quiet night for the officers involved (6,500 yen is a measly 33 pound), as within 5 minutes eight of them (in four police cars) arrived at the scene.

But as soon as the police convoy neared the youths, they sped off on their motorbikes in anticipation of the chase. But perhaps as expected the scheme didn’t go quite to plan, as one of the gang crashed his bike in the excitement and was immediately apprehended by the large group of bemused officers.

And just to compound matters, one of the bikes was found to have a stolen license plate. Resulting in 2 of the youths being charged with theft, and the other 3 on charges of falsely reporting a crime.

During questioning, the youngster who crashed his bike said, “I wanted to experience the thrill of being chased by a police car.” Which if nothing else he did. Of sorts.

Categorized: Odd

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Neighbourly love

A 28-year-old Yokohama resident was arrested yesterday for strangling his next-door neighbour.

It seems Choei Yohena turned off the main gas tap in front of his neighbour’s apartment, and then when the unsuspecting man came out to see what the problem was, Yohena swiftly strangled him from behind.

During police questioning, Yohena said that his neighbour made too much noise, and had been doing so for the last month and a half. But the problem wasn’t loud music, merriment, or even mating. No, it seems that the unfortunate victim merely opened and closed doors in a loud manner.

A just cause for strangulation? Probably not eh?

Categorized: Odd

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Perverted panty procurer

Whilst the ban on used underwear selling is probably to be commended, it could be argued that the clampdown has pushed the nation’s panty perverts into ever more desperate and debauched behaviour.

As in the early hours of Saturday morning, a man armed with a paper cutter attempted to get a 25-year-old woman to part with her panties in the middle of a Sapporo street. Thankfully the woman didn’t succumb to part-time worker Mitsuaki Fujieda’s deviant demand, and after letting out a scream, the would-be panty pilferer ran away.

Yet perhaps emboldened by her attackers reaction, the woman and her friend gave chase and managed to catch the fleeing Fujieda-san. After eventually being handed over to the police, the man was charged with attempted robbery.

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It’s me

Over the last 6 months or so, the “it’s me” telephone scam has become more and more common in Japan. And buoyed by their success, its perpetrators increasingly audacious.

The con is a fraudulent technique were unscrupulous individuals pretend to be the child or grandchild of the person they call. They then make up a false situation, and attempt to extort money from the unsuspecting victim.

A much-favoured method is to claim there has been a car accident, and that they urgently need some money (deposited into a specified bank account) in order to pay off an injured motorist or pedestrian. As preposterous as this sounds, and the fact you’d assume the victims would recognize that the voice on the telephone didn’t belong to their child/grandchild, it’s obviously a good money-spinner. As judging by news reports, it would appear that this technique swindles at least one person every week.

And we aren’t talking small amounts of cash here either. Generally it’s in the millions rather than thousands, and the more gullible victims have been stung two or three times by the same person, as the accident/incident is further exaggerated, thus requiring more money to settle matters.

But yesterday a woman in her 40’s got swindled in perhaps the most daring “it’s me” scam to date. The naïve lady got a call from her son who is a member of the Japanese Self-Defense Force (SDF). With the man claiming that, “I was driving a tank and crashed into an SDF facility wall. I want you to deposit over 1 million yen into my account today to pay for it.”

Yes, you read that right. He’d supposedly crashed his tank, and he had to pay for the damages! Yet however unbelievable that sounds, the woman promptly paid the money, no questions asked.

Police investigators were unsurprisingly shocked by the crime. Presumably at both the boldness of the criminals involved, and the gullible nature of the duped mother. One official rather understatedly said, “We’ve never heard of fraud saying that a self-defense official has crashed a tank.”

No, I bet they haven’t.

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Hyogo hunters

A wild boar was killed on Saturday after making the mistake of visiting a town in Hyogo Prefecture.

The 100-kilogram animal was first spotted in a local park in Nishinomiya, but after disappearing it later resurfaced near a bus terminal. Now obviously having a wild boar running amok around town is not ideal, so 12 police officers and 3 members of a nearby hunting club were called out to rid the town of its unwanted guest.

The thing is their approach to catching/killing the animal was primitive to say the least. As after managing to corner the boar near an apartment complex, they proceeded to hit it with a piece of wood in an attempt to knock it unconscious.

Unsurprisingly the hit-it-with-a-stick-and-hope-for-the-best approach failed miserably, so after cornering the beast a second time, the group of hunters and policemen threw a net over the animal. An idea that was not only much more sensible, but also successful.

Yet despite catching the boar with a more modern and thoughtful approach, the men quickly reverted back to basics and killed the captured beast by spearing it to death.

One of the hunters justified this by saying, “It posed a danger to people in the city. It was big and capturing it alive was extremely dangerous.”

Maybe so, but did they have to spear the poor animal to death?

wild boar

I’m not sure at what point in the chase this picture was taken, but presumably sticks and spears were involved.

Categorized: Odd

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The customer isn’t always right (update)

A few weeks ago I wrote about a gyudon restaurant owner who was arrested on suspicion of killing a complaining customer.

Earlier this week a few more details about the case were released, and 26-year-old Katsuhisa Ukon was officially charged with murder.

It seems that the murdered customer was especially vociferous and persistent with his complaints. At one time even moaning that the rice in packed meals was leaning to one side. Now regardless of how big a rice fan you are, I think that has to go down as somewhat on the petty side. In fact I wasn’t even aware that rice could be accused of leaning.

Whether it can or not remains unproven, but Ukon-san obviously thought the complaints were excessive. Even after being officially charged with murder he remained unrepentant. When questioned over his motives, he told police that, “I thought this world would be better off without him.”

And all over a bowl of this.

gyudon