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Jan 25 2005 1 Comment

Furtive fire fighter

As upskirt photography appears to be relatively common in Japan, a report of every incident or arrest would probably require a site dedicated solely to such material. Although in all honesty it has to be said that Tokyo Times hasn’t exactly shied away from mentioning such shady shenanigans. But last week a senior fire fighter was caught in the act, and his inventive approach makes his case stand out from the rest somewhat.

Rather than hanging around escalators, or taking clandestine pictures on the train, 31-year-old Michinori Okabe took a patient to the hospital along with a camera equipped mobile phone hidden in his shoe.

With incredible dedication to his own unique brand of photography, Okabe made a 5 mm hole in the instep of one of his shoes in order to line-up the camera on his phone. And using the mobile’s movie mode he attempted to film up the skirt of two women.

Despite the ingenious nature of his camera-equipped shoe, Okabe’s technique appears to have let him down, as a patient saw him engaged in a spot of foot filming. Resulting in the fire fighter’s ignominious arrest.

During questioning Okabe admitted to the charges, saying, “I wanted to film women’s underwear. I did the same thing at the hospital on January 4th.” And presumably with the body part pun very much unintended, he added, “I was trying to take secret footage.”

Categorized: Odd, Sex, Technology Stuff

Jan 24 2005 29 Comments

Sumo give away

Before each of the six annual sumo tournaments, a banzuke is released.

sumo banzuke

Banzuke – like the badly photographed one above – are ranking sheets that not only list all the wrestlers (around 600), but also all the staff connected with the sport. And as each tournament has a hand written original with a unique calligraphy style, they are practically works of art.

This type of banzuke has been around since 1757, and due to a rather tenuous link to the sumo world, I have acquired an extra one that I’m willing to post off to a Tokyo Times reader. If you are in any way interested, leave a comment below. The one that either amuses or interests me the most will receive the pictured banzuke, plus a photograph from the recent tournament if I can get my pictures developed in time.

Categorized: Culture, Sports

Jan 24 2005 Leave a Comment

Busted banker

A deputy head of a local bank in Niigata was arrested last week on suspicion of stealing a cool 58 million yen (290,000 pounds) from his workplace.

It is alleged that 41-year-old Norio Maruyama stole 5,826 notes from the middle of a (presumably substantial) wad of cash kept at his branch. And so as not to draw attention to the missing money, Maruyama-san ingeniously replaced the missing notes with plain pieces of paper cut to the same size.

The scam worked perfectly until 100 million yen worth of cash that had been stored at the bank was transferred to another facility to be replaced with new currency. And whilst it was there an eagle eyed employee spotted the plain paper masquerading as money.

The inventive Maruyama has since been referred to prosecutors on suspicion of theft, although he is said to have categorically denied the allegations.

Rumours that he made the comment from his Condo in Hawaii whilst sipping champagne and entertaining a bevy of beauties have yet to be confirmed.

Categorized: General

Jan 21 2005 4 Comments

Lineage lover loses out

A woman in her 30’s has been reported to the Fukushima District Prosecutors office for deleting her ex-boyfriend’s online game data. A crime she committed by obtaining the necessary username and password without consent.

Whilst the man didn’t suffer financially, he did lose lots of data that he’d collected over countless hours sat in front of his computer. Items such as weapons, clothes, and, erm, other such things. The game in question is “Lineage”, which includes characters like knights and magicians. Meaning I probably don’t need to go into anymore detail regarding the kind of data we are talking about here.

lineage

But as interesting as this is in a geeky kind of way (well, it is to me anyway), an added twist is that the man and woman actually met through the game. Although sadly their respective character names and status weren’t revealed.

Unfortunately the relationship didn’t last long, and has now resulted in this sorry state of affairs. Apparently the, ahem, magic just wasn’t there.

Categorized: Games, Odd

Jan 21 2005 1 Comment

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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