21-year-old college student arrived in Japan in September, had been missing since early October.

The body of a foreign tourist who had been missing in Japan since last month has been found.

German university student Claudio Worm arrived in Japan on September 21 and spent a little over a week sightseeing in Tokyo. On September 30 he left the capital to stay in Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture. During his travels in the country the 21-year-old Worm had been keeping in touch with his mother in Germany via social media messages, with his last contact with her coming at roughly 5 o’clock in the morning on October 10, when he was scheduled to check out of the lodgings he’d booked in Wakayama, with his classes in Germany starting on October 12.

▼ A post from the Osaka German consulate’s official Twitter account after it learned of Worm’s disappearance asking for anyone who had seen him to contact the police.

However, Worm did not return to Germany. His parents, worried about their son and unable to get in touch with him, enlisted the help of a Japanese friend of the family who contacted the Wakayama Prefectural Police on October 16 and explained the situation. A subsequent examination of security camera footage taken in the vicinity of Wakayamashi Station in Wakayama City turned up images of a man fitting Worm’s description walking near the station on the night of October 11 at around 8:30 p.m. Worm’s passport and phone were later found in a public restroom located by the Kisogawa River, which runs along the north edge of the Wakayama city center, and on October 30 his suitcase, containing clothes and other personal effects, was discovered to have been inside a coin locker at Wakayama Station (another rail stop in the downtown area), though it’s unclear when it was placed there.

▼ It’s about a six-minute train ride, or a 40-minute walk, from Wakayamashi Station to Wakayama Station.

Then, on November 1, the local Coast Guard division received a report that a body had been spotted floating in the ocean, approximately 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) off the coastline neat Tagurasaki, a point northwest of downtown Wakayama. The body, naked from the waist up, was floating face-up and badly damaged, leading investigators to believe that it had been in the water for quite some time. DNA testing has now confirmed that the body is that of Worm. The body had no immediately visible wounds, and the police are still investigating the cause of death and chain of events that led to it.

▼ Tagurasaki

It’s sadly too late for anything to be done for Worm. Hopefully the sad ending to his journey in Japan will be a solemn reminder that it’s important to keep track of the schedules of friends and family members who are solo traveling, especially abroad, and to contact the authorities at the first sign of worrisome silence.

Source: NHK News Web, Nitele News
Top image: Twitter/@GermanyinWestjp
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