A public restroom stall shock that had nothing to do with cleanliness.
Whether you’re looking for a Pokémon frappe, chocolate chip sandwich, or surprisingly high-quality T-shirt, Japan’s convenience stores have got you covered. As a matter of fact, it can start to become easy to become desensitized to the very wide variety of things you can find in a Japanese convenience store, but earlier this month a customer at one in the town of Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture came across something that still managed to shock him, as the late-night shopper found a gun inside the shop.
Firearm ownership is heavily regulated in Japan, however, so the gun wasn’t something the store was selling, and it wasn’t out on the shelves between the boxes of Pocky and packs of melon bread either. Instead, the customer, who was at the store at around 12:35 a.m. on June 3, found the gun in the store’s bathroom. After he stepped into a stall, he noticed a belt hanging from a hook ordinarily meant for bags or coats. Attached to the belt was a holster, and inside the holster was a pistol.
We’ve often discussed how life in Japan isn’t like anime, but reality here is also very different from video games, and you generally won’t find weapons just lying about in real-life Japan like it’s an RPG. An odd exception, though, is bathrooms, which periodically turn into unintended armories when police officers use them and forget to take their guns with them once they’re done doing their bathroom business. That’s what happened in this case as well, with the firearm being traced back to a police officer with the Yamaguchi Prefectural Police who was on duty that night and had stopped by the convenience store roughly 40 minutes before the customer found his gun.
The customer informed the store staff about the forgotten weapon, and the store then contacted the policer to report its discovery. The officer has admitted to accidentally leaving his weapon behind, and the Yamaguchi police have pledged to reassert to all officers the importance of making sure they haven’t left their gun behind and unaccounted for when moving from one location to another.
In addition to convenience stores, in recent years there have also been incidents of officers accidentally leaving weapons behind at a restroom in an airport and even one within a police station.
Until recently, most police departments prohibited officers from making use of convenience stores while on duty and in uniform. With such regulations being eased, though, the frequency with which police firearms are brought into stores will likely continue to increase, so hopefully officers will remember to take them back out too.
Source: TBS News Dig via Yahoo! Japan News via Kinisoku
Top image: Pakutaso
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