It happens to many men in their 40s. You wake up one day and realize you’re flabby and out of shape, a mere shadow of your former youthful, vigorous self. You’re not 20 anymore, and your daily donut and beer habit is catching up with you.
So you buy a gym membership, lose a bunch of weight, and suddenly – to the alternating delight and disdain of your Instagram followers – your life is all about getting swole. You may even start participating in triathlons, hell-bent on crushing your age bracket.
But an unemployed Osaka resident took a different path, using his newfound powers for evil.
Local police recently took the suspect* into custody after discovering he was the party behind a series of office building break-ins between 2017 and 2018 in which around ￥9,450,000 (appr. USD $86,000) was stolen. He tells the police that he stole in order to support himself.
But it’s how he did it that caught police’s fancy. The suspect is apparently a dedicated gym nut who can bench press an impressive 245 pounds. Rather than enter a bodybuilding contest, however, he used his strength to scale the walls of office buildings, using emergency escapes, ladders, and even air conditioning units to make his way to unlocked entrances. Reports say he was so deft that he could scale five stories in under a minute.
The suspect’s alleged year-and-a-half-long crime streak came to an end when he accidentally dropped the key to his building at one of the offices he sacked. However, according to someone familiar with the investigation, he was difficult to catch: he craftily evaded cameras, and even managed to shake police officers who were trailing him.
The suspect was finally caught in the act when an officer, after losing sight of him, looked up and found him scaling a building wall. His strength, dexterity, and fleetness of foot led his captors to dub him the “Ninja” bandit.
Online reaction to the arrest oscillated between impressed (“There are still real life ninjas!”) to sad (“If he’d only taken the use of his abilities in another direction…”). After all, not everyone who engages in strength training has the physical agility or plain lack of fear required to scale buildings.
Japan is in the midst of a strength training boom, with the mode of exercise more popular than it’s ever been. According to a survey by Japanese entertainment site Sirabee, a little over 18% of Japanese men and women between ages 20 and 60 report that they regularly engage in strength training. For the 20-23 age group, the percentage rises closer to 30%.
While this story has a sad ending for the suspect, at least he’ll have access to the prison gym. Though I’d suggest guards keep a very close eye on him when they let him out into the yard…
* At the request of the accused, who’s working to rehabilitate himself, we’ve removed his real name from this article.
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Sources
「忍者」と呼ばれた筋トレ男 窃盗で逮捕に「別のことに活かしていれば」と嘆きの声. Sirabee (Archive.org)