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He should have punched harder and knocked some sense into himself<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n They say times are especially tough in the ramen business<\/a>, with steadily soaring food prices and an intensely competitive market that demands prices be kept low. But let\u2019s not overlook one silent victim in all this: a would-be scam artist working in a ramen restaurant who could barely get away with skimming profit when there isn\u2019t much to begin with. These desperate times have apparently called for some really desperate measures.<\/p>\n On 23 October, at about 9:40 in the evening, the 36-year-old manager of a Kumamoto Ramen Ikugen branch in Namegawa, Saitama Prefecture, called the 110 emergency police number and said he was robbed at knife point. When the police arrived, he told them that the robber jumped him right after closing time, punching him in the face and stealing roughly 670,000 yen (US$4,300) of the restaurant\u2019s cash<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Saitama Prefectural Police launched an investigation, but as it progressed, they began to notice some irregularities. The biggest one was that at the time of the robbery, there were no other people fitting the assailant\u2019s description on surveillance cameras anywhere in the surrounding area<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u25bc There are said to be around 5,000,000 surveillance cameras across Japan.<\/p>\n Considering the possibility that this might still be the work of an exceptionally cunning thief, they cautiously began to look at other potential scenarios and turned their attention to the manager. An inspection of his smartphone revealed terms such as \u201cstaged robbery victim\u201d in his search history.<\/strong> In light of that evidence, the man confessed and said he had embezzled the money to use for living expenses and playing the pseudo-gambling pinball game of pachinko. He also added that his facial injuries that night were the result of him punching himself in the face.<\/p>\n He was arrested for making a false emergency call and obstructing police duties on 29 January<\/strong>, and police are currently investigating the details of the embezzlement the man had admitted to before pressing charges. Meanwhile, readers of the news weren\u2019t surprised he didn\u2019t get away with his scheme in this age of widespread surveillance in urban areas.<\/p>\n \u201cThey always catch this. A kid I went to high school with tried the same thing at a part-time job and got busted.\u201d<\/em> One silver lining in all that is that the other, law-abiding folks at Kumamoto Ramen Ikugen are getting some great publicity and recognition for their fine culinary work. Perhaps this incident can serve as a reminder for all of us to visit our local restaurant<\/a> and tell them we love their ramen, before their management goes wacky and starts punching themselves in the face.<\/p>\n Source: Saitama Shimbun<\/a>, Hachima Kiko<\/a>, Meiji.net<\/a><\/em> He should have punched harder and knocked some sense into himself. They say times are especially tough in the ramen business, with steadily soaring food prices and an intensely competitive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/02\/YAT1912221367_TP_V4.jpg?w=640\")
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\n\u201cThat guy probably had some other embarrassing stuff in his history, too.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cThey got cameras everywhere these days. It\u2019s crazy to try a stunt like that.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cHe was probably researching staged robberies during work hours, too.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI don\u2019t like the idea of the police checking a victim\u2019s search history.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI thought I remembered the name of that restaurant. It was profiled on a ramen YouTube channel a while ago!\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI checked the place on Google, and it has really good reviews.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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\nInsert image: Pakutaso<\/a><\/em>
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