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Kanagawa man arrested for pouring instant noodles into train ticket machine

Master Blaster Apr 1, 2025
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We can only hope he didn’t also put money down his throat.

I’ve always marveled at the ticket gates at Japanese train stations by the way you can just toss a ticket in at any angle and it comes out perfectly scanned and straightened in a second flat. The machines to buy the tickets, however, are a little less elegant in design. Trying to decode the map while selecting the right ticket and number of people can be quite stressful at times.

It might be enough to make some people snap, though we can’t be sure that’s what happened in the case of a man who was arrested for the destruction of a train station ticket machine on 26 March.

▼ A news report about the incident which the CGI guy must have enjoyed working on

On 12 December of last year, police in Matsuda, Kanagawa received a call from the staff of Shin-Matsuda Station saying that their ticket machine had been vandalized. A review of the security camera footage found that at about 11:05 p.m. the day before a man appeared to pour his instant ramen into the coin slot of the now inoperable machine.

▼ If I were the man’s lawyer, I’d probably mention that those coin slots do look a bit like where you throw away leftover liquids by the trash cans in restaurants and food courts.

A further investigation found that witnesses saw the man hanging around the station and eating noodles at the time of the incident. It took some time, but police were finally able to arrest him for the destruction of property valued at 1.5 million yen (US$10,000). Upon his arrest, the suspect gave the very difficult-to-pull-off partial denial, saying: “It’s not that I didn’t do it at all, but it’s just that I can’t remember the specifics.”

While police try to get him to commit to a plea, readers of the news online claimed in comments that this problem might happen more than one would expect.

“That happens in pachinko parlors a lot too.”
“That’s just annoying!”
“I’m going to assume he was drunk at the time.”
“He was just being kind and giving soup to the machine.”
“I heard that people do this at arcades too. They pour drinks into the games’ coin slots for some reason.”
“He seems to have a superhuman lack of shame.”
“At least people don’t use those machines as much anymore.”

It’s true that IC cards have been in place for a while now, and some railways are converting to QR code scanners as a cheaper method that soup can just be wiped off of. Still, those clunky yet dignified machines have served Japan well during many busy commutes, and it’s sad to see them treated this way. Besides, there are lots of fun and delicious things to do with leftover instant ramen that don’t involve destruction of property.

Source: Kanaloco, TV Asahi, Itai News
Photos ©SoraNews24
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