Large drunk foreign man arrested for trespassing on imperial palace grounds in Tokyo

Visiting the imperial family unannounced is always a bad idea, especially when it’s the middle of the night and you’re hammered.

There are a lot of situations in life where how people will react varies from person to person. However, some things are more or less universal, and one of them is this: If you’re drunk at 2:30 in the morning, no one will be happy if you show up unannounced at their front door. Not your friends, not you coworkers, and certainly not the imperial family of Japan.

This seemingly east-to-grasp concept, however, and that third subpoint in particular, seems to have slipped through the mental functions of one man. In the early hours of last Sunday morning a “large Western-appearing young man” was arrested on the grounds of the imperial palace in downtown Tokyo on trespassing charges. According to the Imperial Guard, the division of the Japanese police force tasked with protecting the imperial family and their residences, the man was spotted by an officer walking on an embankment of the palace grounds outside the Hanzomon Gate, past the fence that marks the boundary of the area in which the public is allowed.

▼ The area the man was apprehended at can be seen in the video here.

The man did not become physically confrontational as he was taken into custody, nor was he in possession of any weapons or other items indicating malicious intent. He was, however, in a clearly intoxicated condition and unable to communicate in Japanese, so he was taken to the precinct to sober up, and an English-proficient officer summoned to explain the situation he’d gotten himself into.

Given that he was unarmed and compliant, it seems unlikely that the man’s intrusion was premeditated, and it’s not currently clear if his alcohol-addled brain had even registered just where he was trying to walk into. All the same, with the Hanzomon Gate being the closest gate to the imperial family’s residency compound within the palace grounds, his intrusion isn’t something that’s going to be taken lightly either. So remember, if you’ve been out drinking until 2 in the morning, really the only place you should be headed after you leave the pub is home…and that’s yourhome, not the imperial family’s.

Source: TBS News Dig via Livedoor News via Hachima Kiko, FNN Prime Online
Top image: Wikipedia/Kakidai
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