There but for the grace of god go I. At least I know TokyoPlayer can account for his whereabouts today.
It hasn’t yet reached the English language newspapers here, but all the Japanese news sites are running the story. A 40-year-old tourist from Spain, visiting the Imperial Palace in Tokyo with a tour group, began ranting that his bag was lost, stripped naked, and jumped into the (rather filthy) moat.
Some police paddled out on a boat to… well, I don’t know what they hoped to accomplish, but the man chased them away with a rock. He then got out of the water and ran around a bit, panicking the police until they brought out the man-catchers and drove him back into the water. He then climbed up the high inner wall of the moat (knocking a few of the large stones out in the process) and sat on the grass until they finally came to take him away.
Not sure if he was drunk or mentally unstable, but the rest of his tour group will certainly have some interesting stories to tell when they get back home.
There’s a discussion over at the FuckedGaijin boards with more information:
http: //www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21585 (NSFW: Youtube links, photos of naked rampaging tourist, crude avatars, etc.)
This may be cruel of me, but I can’t watch the news footage without laughing my ass off.
When we were visiting Ireland, we saw a man get stripped naked and thrown into a decorative moat around a building in Dublin.
We figured it was a Frat prank, or the guy was getting married, or something. Unless the Irish occasionally strip strangers and throw them into the moat.
Expats in Japan: will all of your Japanese friends and associates now start eyeing you suspiciously, half expecting you to flip out and start running around naked?
If you have watched any of the video, you must see the link above. It is post number 49, click on the second picture. That alone was worth the price of my subscription for the year.
This one doesn’t bother me. Nobody got hurt, and unlike drunken yobbos smashing windows and knocking over shop displays, this one is so comically over-the-top that nobody could seriously think it’s representative behavior. Even the typical “foreign crime will eat your children!!!” news shows seem to be shrugging their shoulders.
Besides, what are they going to say? “I don’t feel safe around those foreigners. They’re all so… run-around-naked-y!”
Although to be honest, I’m tempted to start seductively unbuttoning my shirt on the train home tonight.
We don’t have fraternities here. It could have been drunken students or some of those stereotypical English lager louts who come over for stag weekends.