
As you already know, the third anniversary of the 3/11 Tohoku disaster was remembered this week through a variety of activities, including a fundraiser by Yahoo! Japan which saw the company donating roughly $250,000 to charity. The anniversary was also marked by a powerful earthquake off the coast of Kyushu at around 2 am on March 12, injuring about 14 people and wrecking havoc on innocent anime figures.
It also brought grins to all of the NHK viewers and Twitter users who happened to catch the public broadcaster’s footage of a confused-looking man running around an office in his underwear!
Often broadcasts of news related to earthquakes in Japan will also feature footage from inside of offices or other buildings to help put the force of the earth shaking into perspective. While most anyone who’s lived in Japan for a while has experienced an earthquake personally, there’s something particularly powerful about seeing a normal office flinging itself into disarray.
The earthquake on Thursday night/Friday morning was no different, with NHK cutting to footage inside of a typical Japanese news office. However, there was one tiny difference. See if you can spot it in the photo below!
今日の特別賞 NHK高松ニュース pic.twitter.com/WbPhoYk7dE
— へいきん (@heikin1191943) March 13, 2014
The tweet reads: “Today’s special award: NHK Takamatsu News” and has certainly gotten the attention of Japanese Twitter users! Various versions of this tweet have accumulated well over 7,000 retweets, leaving everyone to wonder: Just who the heck is this guy??
▼ “Somehow, some guy in his underwear ended up on an NHK broadcast.”
https://twitter.com/musasabi6331/status/444164696392736770/
Commenters and Twitters users reacted with what could best be described as a combination of empathy and glee.
I laughed so freaking hard! LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Aw, poor guy!
He must have been shaken awake from a nap. I bet he’s someone in the media.
This guy on the night shift got woken up by the earthquake and ended up being broadcast all across the country in his underwear! How unfortunate.
You can really tell that they’re broadcasting live!
People really strip down to their underwear at work?
[In response to above comment] Isn’t that how people normally sleep?
Well, everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame somehow, right?
Now, we just want to know why it’s okay for NHK to show this on TV, but the cops come knocking whenever we go running around singing in our underwear on Saturday night. Seems a bit unfair to us!

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