12-year-old British girl who went missing in Tokyo found safe after visiting anime sites around Yokohama

Police say she also spent time at an Internet cafe.

Carmelita Lakdesha Paul, a 12-year-old British secondary school student who went missing while travelling in Japan with her family, has been found safe after spending time at an Internet cafe while visiting anime-related locations around Yokohama.

Carmelita had been staying with her family at a private rental property in Minami-Kamata, a neighbourhood in Tokyo’s Ota Ward, after arriving in Japan for sightseeing with her parents and older brother on 21 July. She was reported missing by her mother shortly before 9:30 a.m. on 13 August, after the family awoke at around 8:30 a.m. and realised she was gone.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department issued a public request for information the following day, and officers continued searching for Carmelita, including checking security camera footage. Through surveillance footage, they were able to trace her whereabouts to Yokohama Station in Tokyo’s neighbouring Kanagawa Prefecture on the morning of her disappearance but they were unable to locate her beyond that. Carmelita was said to only have a few thousand yen (less than US$100) on her when she left, and she did not take her passport with her.

▼ The train journey between Keikyu-Kamata, the nearest station to the vacation rental, and Yokohama takes around 12 minutes.

Though she was scheduled to return to her home country with her family on 14 August, at around 8 p.m. on 15 August, roughly 59 hours after she left the family’s accommodation, Carmelita walked into a police box in Yokohama by herself. She was unharmed and reportedly told officers that she had begun to miss her parents and didn’t know the way back to where they were staying.

Police say Carmelita had gone out to visit anime “pilgrimage sites” (the term used to describe real-world locations associated with an anime or manga) and had also stayed at an Internet cafe.

Although police haven’t released details of how long she stayed at the Internet cafe, this part of the story raises questions about how a 12-year-old was able to stay there. Minors aren’t generally barred from entering Internet cafes during the day in Kanagawa, but there are restrictions, particularly late at night, with or without a guardian, and individual establishments may impose additional age restrictions. It therefore remains unclear how she was able to stay there.

While police haven’t revealed any other details, except to say they do not believe any crime occurred, additional details about Carmelita’s movements were provided by Tsunehiko Maeda, a former prosecutor, in an online comment.

Maeda said Carmelita had told her parents the previous day that she wanted to visit Yokohama to see locations associated with Bungo Stray Dogs, an anime that she likes. He also said that investigators found evidence that she had travelled from Keikyu Kamata Station to Yokohama Station using a transport IC card, suggesting she had set out for Yokohama deliberately, rather than becoming lost after leaving her accommodation.

Bungo Stray Dogs, the anime that reportedly inspired Carmelita’s trip to Yokohama, is set largely in Yokohama and follows the members of the Armed Detective Agency, a group of detectives with supernatural abilities. It won’t be lost on fans of the anime that after spending two nights away from her family while visiting locations associated with the series, Carmelita found herself seeking help from the real-life police there.

With police saying there was no criminal involvement in the disappearance, Carmelita has now been safely reunited with her family.

Sources: Yomiuri, Asahi Shimbun,  FNN via Yahoo! News Japan
Featured image: Pakutaso 
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