A rare case of udon being unexpected in Udon Prefecture, but where they came from is still a mystery.

Usually, there’s nothing strange about finding udon noodles in Kagawa Prefecture. The place is so heavily associated with the dish and has so many restaurants specializing in it that it’s jokingly referred to as “Udon Prefecture,” even.

And yet, even in Kagawa there are some places no one expects to find udon, like in the refrigerator of a house that nobody is living in.

On September 22, a 69-year-old man stopped by a house he owns in the Kagawa city of Mitoyo. When he opened up the refrigerator, he saw a pack of udon noodles inside, but he didn’t buy or put them there. What’s more, the man’s primary residence is somewhere else, and no one lives in the house where he found the udon.

▼ A video reenactment of the events

Suspicions aroused, the owner set up a security camera in the kitchen, and four days later got what appeared at first to be the answer he was looking for. The recorded video showed a 39-year-old man the owner had never seen before entering the kitchen and rummaging about, ostensibly looking for something valuable to steal but finding nothing, as the house is unoccupied. The owner then contacted the police, who were able to identify the man and placed him under arrest for illegally entering the house.

OK, so mystery solved, right? Here’s the thing, though. During questioning the arrested man told the police “There is no mistake that I entered the house.” However, he hasn’t admitted to putting the udon in the refrigerator. This bizarre twist has led to online reactions including:

“There’s so much that’s weird about this whole thing…”
“It must have taken courage for the owner to call the police and say ‘There’s udon that I didn’t buy in the refrigerator!’ He’s almost 70, and they might have just said ‘Gramps, are you sure you didn’t [forget buying] it?’”
“It’s surreal to imagine the detectives interrogated a suspect and saying ‘Come clean! You were the one who left those udon noodles, weren’t you?”
“He admits to breaking in, but says he didn’t put the udon there? That’s terrifying.”
“So the genre of ‘udon suspense horror’ exists in Kagawa, huh?”
“Things have to get pretty crazy for it to be a shock to see udon in Kagawa.”

It’s possible that the man who was arrested was in fact the person who put the udon in the fridge, but is simply refusing to admit to anything he wasn’t caught on camera doing. After all, since the owner installed the security camera after finding the noodles, if the arrested man were to admit to putting them in the fridge he’d also be admitting to having broken into the house more than once.

That scenario, though, raises the question of why someone would break into a home and bring noodles with them. The obvious answer would be if someone were squatting in an unoccupied home, but while the arrested man is unemployed, he’s not homeless, and in fact police officers served the warrant for his arrest at his home, where he would ostensibly have his own kitchen appliances necessary for storing and cooking noodles.

The very Kagawa-like investigation is still ongoing, though there is no word as to if Governor Slowpoke will be involved.

Source: KSB, Tele Asa News via Yahoo! Japan News via Hachima Kiko, YouTube/ANN News
Top image: Pakutaso
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