abunai

We’ve all woken up with a bad hangover and little to no memory of the night before. A few drinks with friends is a great way to unwind after work, and if a little of something is good, then a lot of something must be great, right?

Well, when it comes to alcohol, we suppose that depends on how much is a lot, but for one Saga Prefecture gentleman, it turns out that a lot was far too much. The government employee apparently fell off of a train platform and landed on the tracks, where he lay for six hours. Unfortunately, when he woke up, a pounding headache was the least of his worries.

On Thursday morning, Saga Prefecture emergency services received a 119 call (the phone number for the fire department or hospital in Japan), asking for an ambulance to be sent to Karatsu Station. The government employee, a middle-aged man in his fifties, explained that he was stuck on the train tracks where he had been hit by a train and his left leg had been cut off below the knee.

Emergency workers soon arrived on the scene and found the man lying under a train with his left leg nearly cut off below the knee. After pulling him out, emergency workers rushed the government worker to a hospital. Despite the severity of his injury, the middle-aged man was awake and talking, so we expect that he’ll survive.

train1

According to authorities, the gentleman had been drinking with co-workers until about 8:30 pm on Wednesday night when they parted ways and headed home. The unfortunate man had intended to take the 9:38 pm train to Saga but never got on it. In fact, until he woke up on the train tracks on Thursday morning, no one had seen him, and the middle-aged government worker says that he has no recollection of the events that lead to him waking up under a train with part of his leg missing.

That includes the JR (Japan Railways) conductor of the out-of-service train that arrived at Karatsu station around 10:30 pm Wednesday night, who apparently never noticed the man lying on the tracks. However, the current assumption is that the injured man was actually run over by the train on Wednesday night, lost consciousness, and laid there for nearly six hours. The train that lopped off his leg was returning to the station in preparation for service on Thursday morning, and it seems that the train had remained parked on top of him the entire night.

train 2

The police are currently investigating whether or not he fell onto the tracks as a result of alcohol. We don’t want to tell anyone how to do their jobs, but we’re not sure an investigation is really necessary…

While we’re obviously very glad to hear that he’s alive, we have to admit that if we’d read this story in a novel, we’d throw the book against the wall for being unrealistic. This is one of those cases where we honestly have no idea if he’s incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky.

Either way, we’re definitely going to be taking those posters about being careful on the platforms much more seriously. Heck, we might even look up from our smartphones once in a while too!

Sources: FNN News, YouTube, Asahi Shimbun, Hachima Kikou
Images: Kawasaki Danshuu Shinseikai, YouTube

For a bizarre summary of the events, here’s a brief Tomo News video. It’s all in Japanese, but there are some old school 3-D computer generated images to help you get a better idea of the events.