
Not the best way to tell your ex how you feel.
Oftentimes, when a couple breaks up, it’s best for both parties to just move on with their lives as civilly as possible. However, some people can’t let go without a final message of undying love, indignant anger, or, in the case of one man, delicious fried food.
At one point in time, Kengo Harada, a 29-year-old middle school teacher from Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, had a girlfriend. Things didn’t work out, but this Harada’s lingering emotions led him to the neighborhood where his ex, a 26-year-old woman, lives in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture.
Instead of standing outside of her window with a boom box over her head or laying a single rose outside her doorstep, Harada expressed his feelings in a very different way: stuffing her apartment’s mailbox with karaage, Japanese-style fried chicken.
Now, in most situations, the sudden, unexpected appearance of karaage is a joyous miracle. Your uninvited ex dropping pieces in with your mail, though, is an exception, and the fact that Harada dropped some plastic straws in as well suggests this was less “Baby I just want you to be happy with fried chicken” and more “Haha have fun cleaning up the trash from my convenience store snack!”
Then there’s the troubling fact that Harada was hanging out in the parking lot of his ex’s apartment complex in the late-night/early-morning hours of last Sunday/Monday. Luckily, a police officer spotted Harada, as security in the area had been beefed up following a report from the woman that someone, probably her ex-boyfriend, had vandalized her car in late March. Harada was arrested on suspicion of violation of Japan’s anti-stalking laws and has admitted to the mailbox vandalism. He is maintaining that he wasn’t stalking his ex, though, and just happened to be in the neighborhood, though considering it’s about a 45-minute drive from Sakai to Kobe, that seems unlikely.
So remember, when your ex says it’s over, it’s over, and also never, ever put leftover food into a mailbox in Japan.
Source: Kobe Shimbun Next via Jin, Nikkan Sports, ABC News
Top image: Pakutaso
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