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Gunma teacher arrested for spray-gluing coworker’s belongings to desk

Master Blaster Dec 24, 2020
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Charges against the teacher are likely to stick.

Who can forget the time in the hit show The Office when Tim, Jim, Paul, Louis, Diego, Yossi, Timo, or Amit – depending on what version you watched – superglued the stuff on the desk of his rival Gareth, Dwight, Joel, Yariv, Jaakko, or T.P. Mishra, and then looked directly at the camera.

It was good fun in all eleven versions of the show, but perhaps there should have been a warning that such frivolity could carry serious consequences if not done properly. It might have helped one teacher in Takasaki City, Gunma Prefecture who was recently arrested for destruction of property.

On 19 October at approximately 1 p.m., the suspect, Koichi Chiba, allegedly entered the staff room of Isesaki Technical High School and applied spray glue to a colleague’s desk, likely rendering all the items on it impossible to pick up.

For that to have been a successful prank, Chiba could have first removed important documents and items and replaced them with lookalikes. Unfortunately he did not, and ended up destroying 46 items valued at 9,169 yen (US$88.60).

▼ The scene of the gluing.

The school was at a loss as to how to handle this situation and consulted the police later that month. As a result, criminal charges were pressed and Chiba was arrested on 21 December.

He is said to be refusing to speak with police, but according to their investigation he had not been on good terms with the other teacher. Chiba had worked at the school for eight years on a part-time basis.

Much like the school, readers of the news weren’t really sure what to make of this unusual case.

“That’s kind of cute.”
“Pretty stupid for a teacher.”
“I think those documents were more valuable than the monetary amount.”
“I don’t know all the details but it seems that going for the spray glue is at least better than resorting to violence.”
“Looks like he spray-glued his mouth shut too.”
“I heard spray glue is good at killing wasps.”
“I never even heard of spray glue. What is it used for?”
“You need to be very careful with spray glue. If you inhale it, it will get trapped in your lungs. What he was doing was also very dangerous.”
“That’s like something a kid would do, and this guy is 55?”

Isesaki Technical High School also issued an apology, saying: “We are sorry for the inconvenience this caused to the students and residents of the prefecture. We will train staff in order to prevent this from reoccurring.”

There is something to be said for Chiba taking out his aggression through creative mischief rather than violence. If he had only put some more thought into his scheme to make it less destructive…actually, it probably still wouldn’t have gone over well.

Pranks of any sort aren’t usually tolerated here, which is probably why Japan is one of the few countries without an adaptation of The Office.

Source: Yahoo! Japan News / Gunma Terebi, Yomiuri Shimbun Online
Top image: Pakutaso (1, 2)
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