Monkey spotted at Shibuya station
A wild monkey was spotted inside Shibuya station this morning, but police failed to capture the beast:
“It’s a monkey – it’s not like it did anything bad,” a police spokesman said, adding that the animal was still on the loose.
The monkey was spotted hopping around by the automatic ticket gates at a train line in Shibuya Station in central Tokyo at about 9:40 a.m. .
It then ran downstairs to the entrance to another line, climbed up and down a pillar and ran around the ticketing machines before taking refuge on top of a train information board for two hours, a spokeswoman for railway operator Tokyu Corp said.
The police attempts to capture the monkey with nets can be seen in the news report videos below.
Fuji TV’s coverage:
Asahi TVs coverage:
NTV’s coverage (via Pink Tentacle):
Footage from somebody’s camera (via Q-Taro)
The monkey proved to be very fast, and eventually made his escape by climbing up on the the Yamanote Line tracks and bolting out of sight. According to an expert interviewed by Fuji TV, the monkey appeared to be about 7 years-old and is likely to have originated in the Okutama area. Some believe that the monkey seen in Shibuya today may have been the same monkey sighted earlier this month in Koganei and Setagaya-ku.
[hat tip to Mark]
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I saw this this morning on CNN international and almost laughed my ass off. This reminds so much of the incident back in fall of 2006, when there was a dog that got caught in a water dwelling somewhere south of the country. It took the cops 7 DAYS!!!! to figure out how to get the dog down from this 15-20 feet hole in the wall. Apparently they had to draw up a plan in typical Japanese fashion, then have it approved by 3-4 different municipal departments!!! by the end, they decided the best thing to do was freak out the dog and force it to jump below to an awaiting net. Amazingly the dog wasn’t really injured, but 7 fucking days in a walled water opening?!?!?!? Anyway. good story! lol
I’m sure it took 100 cops to get the one dog out when it was all said and done lol.
saw it on BBC news, good stuff
Apparently ‘SaruBucks’ was closed, so he had nowhere to wait for his connecting train.
kono momckey ha kawaii desune!!
Run Saru-kun! Run!
saru subarashii
That was great when they had all those green nets ready to catch him and he totally just superman jumped over them. Thats what makes a monkey cool.
There’s some talk that this macaque may have escaped from the local zoo, but I think this may be only the beginning of such incidents.
Rural communities are completely overrun by macaques, and the national government seems to completely ignore the fact. In Otaki, Nagano, where I live, bad forest management policy has led to macaque populations moving closer to the village in search of food. Read more about the village here
Japan has too much forestland to simply ignore pestilence problems. In Toyama the local government finally started arming city employees so that they can start blasting macaques. Seems inhumane, but there are no natural predators left in Japan.
The national government needs to recognized the role that rural landscapes play in Japan and start investing in them more. Otherwise, we’re gonna have monkey’s riding the subways more often.
I think the monkey was more scare then the police.
Ah, where’s Kamen Rider, Ultraman or a Sentai team when u need them?
“Et le singe est dans le station à Tokyo!”, to paraphrase Eddie Izzard’s bilingual bit…
OMG hilarious!