Stealing Underwear
These underwear crime stories are too common in Japan.
Osaka police arrested 44 year old Mitsuru Toyonaga on suspicion of attempting to steal four underwear items from a coin laundry in Miyakojima Ward, according to Sankei Shinbun (newspaper).
A passerby was suspicious of Toyonaga’s behavior and detained him. Police said Toyonaga admitted to the allegation and confessed to having stolen women’s underwear about 100 times since last September. About 450 items of women’s underwear were found in his home, stored by color in a chest of drawers.
This is strange on so many levels. Apart from the underwear stealing and having 450 items in a chest of drawers, what about the passerby who detained him? I’m pretty sure I have done things that might seem suspicious to a Japanese person. I don’t want anyone detaining me! Is detaining someone, as in this case, legal? What if the man was getting his own (women's) underwear out of the laundry? Surely it’s not illegal for a man to buy and own women’s underwear. Ok, so in this case Toyonaga really was stealing another person’s undergarments, but how could the passerby know?
3 comments:
That's just way weird -- and as you said, on many levels.
How did he know which washing machine/tumble dryer to raid? Had he seen a lady (maybe someone he was keen on or even stalking) place her laundry in that particular machine?
Or was the man spotted going through each machine, which would have been suspicious? Had he been seen there before?
I agree, it's horrible to be suspected of doing something that is normal to us foreigners, but might seem strange to the Japanese.
Maybe the passerby wasn't so much a passerby but the person he was stealing from? A citizens arrest for stealing underwear sounds a little outandish!
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