Other passengers likely thought he was sleeping.

In Japan, it’s pretty common to see people sleeping on trains. Crime levels are low enough that there’s little fear of someone picking your pocket or snatching your bag while you snooze, and the punctual nature of Japanese trains means that after a while your body gets used to how long it has to nap until you arrive at your stop.

Still, sometimes people do oversleep, most noticeably if a train comes to its final stop and someone stays seated with their head drooping while everyone else gets off the train. That’s probably what the other passengers assumed had happened with a man onboard a train that had stopped at Hibarigaoka-Hanayashiki Station, in the town of Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture, on Monday afternoon, who was still sitting even as the cleaning crew came onboard and got to work.

Eventually, one of the crew members, a 59-year-old woman, spotted the man and tried to wake him up, but he remained completely unmoving and unresponsive. The woman called for emergency services, and the man was rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The man’s name has not been released, but his identity has been confirmed as that of a 51-year-old civil servant. He had no visible injuries, and so medical examiners are still trying to determine a cause of death.

Source: Kobe Shimbun Next via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
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