Super Squatter in Japan :)

[Michael]

So this dude in Japan noticed food kept missing from his kitchen and set up a hidden camera to send pics to his mobile phone, which caught a woman sneaking in. The woman had apparently been living in a closet in his apartment for months and had her own mattress and many plastic bottles of water according to the following article from Reuters.

Question: Considering that Japanese apartments are not know for being particularly spacious, wouldn't it be easier to open the damn closet and look inside than to set up a hidden camera with Internet connection? Naaawww. Ed, your comments?

Japan man discovers woman living in his closet
Fri May 30, 2008 1:35pm EDT

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese man who was mystified when food kept disappearing from his kitchen, set up a hidden camera and found an unknown woman living secretly in his closet, Japanese media said Friday.

The 57-year-old unemployed man of Fukuoka in southern Japan called police Wednesday when the camera sent pictures to his mobile phone of an intruder in his home while he was out on Wednesday, the Asahi newspaper said on its Website.

Officers rushed to the house and found a 58-year-old unemployed woman hiding in an unused closet, where she had secreted a mattress and plastic drink bottles, the Asahi said. Police suspect she may have been there for several months, the paper said.

"I didn't have anywhere to live," the Nikkan Sports tabloid quoted the woman as telling police.

Local police confirmed that they had arrested a woman for trespassing, but would not comment further on the case.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by David Fox)

[Darthwing Teorist]

Unless that lady is a ninja master, it sounds like the usual tabloid exaggeration.

[meeks]

I find that strangley humorous all the while irritating as crap that she had the nerve to do that to someone.

*meeks, checking his closets...*

[edededed]

Japanese tabloids (which are in a pseudo-magazine format) don't go quite as far as American tabloids (i.e. they don't blatantly lie about aliens and Hitler actually being alive and such). (They also have girlie spreads mixed in with the pseudo-articles.)

That said, I think that this news item is quite possible in Japan, since most older people are very lawful (following the exact same schedule every day - imagine modrons*), making it easy for the woman to keep herself hidden from the home's owner. Men also don't clean up much as women might do...

*Extra nerd points for you if you know what these are...

[Muad'dib]

yeah, I read about this in the Yomiuri, which is not a tabloid.