Foreigner goes for a nude swim in Imperial Palace moat
Around 11:30 this morning, a foreign man went skinny dipping in the moat of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Here’s a video of him in action (from FTV):
The 40-year-old man stripped naked and jumped into the moat, and it took over an hour and a half for police to capture him. As you can see from the video, he threw rocks at anyone who approached him in the water and clearly did not want to be apprehended.
It is not clear why the man went skinny dipping, but it may have had something to do with a group of foreign tourists that had been speaking to officers about a lost bag at a nearby police box at the same time the man prepared to make his jump into the moat.
Update: Sankei Shimbun has reported that the man spoke Spanish, and the Yomiuri claims he is from Spain (It has since been reported that he is a British citizen that lives in Spain. He came to Japan with a Spanish tour group). He apparently dove into the moat naked to retrieve a bag dropped by his friends. Reports indicate that he may have undressed after jumping into the moat.
Update 2: More video of the event!
First a short summary from NTV:
And a more detailed depiction of the event from NTV’s Real Time News broadcast (other networks started off their evening news broadcasts with other stories, but NTV felt this naked guy was very important):
Clearly the police were not well prepared to deal with this kind of problem. When he started threatening them rocks and a pole, some fled in fear!
Update 3: Reuters, the AP, and Bloomberg have picked up this story in English. (Check this link for Epic Lulz.)
Hat tip to Alex for the best comment about this story:
What do you mean he was naked? He wasn’t naked at all. He was wearing the Emperor’s new clothes!
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