A gremlin?
Posted on 12/12/2002 9:47:57 AM PST by ewing
Police said the man was sitting on top of a stepladder, with his upper body buried inside a Boeing 747 through an access door at the bottom of the plane when a real All Nippon Air mechanic spotted him about 9 PM.
When the real mechanic asked who he was, the man who was aged between 20 and 30 and was about 165 cm tall, rushed down the ladder, jumped on a bike parked nearby and fled.
The mechanic told police that the man's costume and a bag he was carrying looked like genuine Airline service products.
Transport Ministry officials carried out a thorough check of the jumbo but did not detect any sign of sabotage.
Since there was a possibility that the man had fiddled with the plane, ANA and Transport Ministry experts carried out a thorough check of the jumbo jet but did not detect any sign of sabotage, although they found that a stewardess' apron was missing.
The ANA jet flew to Sapporo Thursday morning on schedule
OSAKA -- A man dressed as an All Nippon Airways Co. (ANA) mechanic has sneaked into a high security Osaka Itami Airport hangar, police said Thursday.
The mysterious man cycled away when an ANA official spotted him and inquired as to his identity Wednesday night. As an unsuspecting airport guard posted at a gate some 500 meters from the hanger let him pass through, he remains on the lam.
"I've heard that stewardesses' uniforms are exchanging hands at high prices among people with special tastes, but as far as I know, I don't think the same is true for mechanic's garments," a spokesman for ANA's Itami airport branch said.
However, Osaka branch officials of the Transport Ministry's Civil Aviation Bureau said the matter is a serious concern. "Since the 9.11 terrorist attacks in the United States our airports have been maintaining the highest state of security alert. We've never heard of anyone disguised as a mechanic trespassing into a hangar before."
Police said the man was sitting on top of a stepladder, with his upper body buried inside a Boeing 747 through an access door at the bottom of the plane when a real ANA mechanic spotted him at around 9 p.m.
When the ANA mechanic asked who he was, the man, who was aged between 20 and 30 and was about 165-centimeter tall, rushed down the ladder, jumped on a bike parked nearby and fled.
The mechanic told police that the man's costume and a bag he was carrying looked like genuine ANA service products.
Since there was a possibility that the man had fiddled with the plane, ANA and Transport Ministry experts carried out a thorough check of the jumbo jet but did not detect any sign of sabotage, although they found that a stewardess' apron was missing.
The ANA jet flew to Sapporo Thursday morning on schedule.
Police are hunting the man on suspicion of breaking the Aviation Law. (Mainichi Shimbun, Dec. 12, 2002)
[chuckle]
"Pinging" is replying to someone who you want to see the post. So, if someone wanted for me to see this post, they would reply to RoughDobermann and I would see New Posts To Me highlighting when I log in.
BUMP = Bumping the thread to the top so other people can see it.
PING = Calling the thread to the attention of a specific person or people, by putting their screen name(s) in the To: column.
A gremlin?
It's the First Law of Freeperdynamics. The change in the internal energy of a thread is equal to the posters added to a thread via pinging and bumping, minus the deletions resulting from the work of the Admin Moderators.
Costume fetishism is a BIIIIIIIIIG deal in Japan --huge. I've known dads to go out and buy (partly out of guilt, admittedly) all kinds of premium baseball crap, just cuz junior has started to ask him for a game of catchball.
Somehow the restricting confines of Japanese society somehow propels legions of "otaku" (that's Japanese for "homebound cloistered geek") to act out their obsessions in elaborate ways. It's a bit like the American kooks who go around saying that they're Medal of Honor winners, retired Navy SEALs, etc.
Japan is chocked full of these eccentric guys. When you've got folks invading airports, that's a police matter, sure, but usually this kind of penumbra craziness is not even really seen as terribly odd.
Ever see those elaborate electric-powered BB guns that shoot plastic balls? That's called "airsoft". They're from Japan. Legions of fairly boring, computer key-tapping guys go out on weekends decked out like Vietnam-era GI's shooting each other with those things. Not too weird, right?
Ummmmm...wrong.
The level of sartorial detail that goes into their little hobby is creepy; on their helmet covers they even write things like "When I die, bury me face down so I can tell the world to KISS MY AS*". And they've got a condom stuck in the side of their helmet band, and an authentic zippo lighter with the engraved unit insignia, and everything.
They will obsessively collect and collect, developing this alter ego. They will get very well versed on all the technical minutaie of the Vietnam war, or whatever. With the residual Japanese need to form some kind of group, they start to reach out to each other. They reinforce each other. A hierarchy begins to form. It starts getting a little sick and obsessive. But still mostly harmless. Other kooky crowds in Japan revolve around trains, cops, pilots, whatever.
This sort of sick, lonely guy probably gets realllllly pumped up about airplanes, and it got out of hand.
I can remember they arrested this guy near the Diet building, claiming to be Secret Service (that's "SP" in Japanese). His sickness was at an advanced stage, so he stuck to his story for a good while. He was resourceful, and had gotten his hands on all kinds of authentic stuff he shouldn't have had, and he absolutely looked the part.
Know what he was doing?
He was ON PATROL. He was really was making sure no one attacked the Diet building.
DON'T ASK.....!
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