Attention Japan News Nerds! (Blaze in Osaka)

[Cyka UchuuJin]

[floatl][/floatl]
Any of you geeks who sit by your police scanners have any idea why there are 5 helicopters hovering over Namba area in Osaka since 0545 this morning? The damn things have woken me up and it better be due to some guy who's holding hostages or a spectacular Nankai train accident.

Edit: Now they are directly above my area (Minami Horie) and there are lots of police sirens. Go geeks...go go go! The suspense is killing me!

Another edit: it seems the reason there were so many sirens in my area were due to ambulances delivering char-broiled pervs to the hospico 'ohno' a few blocks away from my house.

[Behan]

Any of you geeks who sit by your police scanners have any idea why there are 5 helicopters hovering over Namba area in Osaka since 0545 this morning? The damn things have woken me up and it better be due to some guy who's holding hostages or a spectacular Nankai train accident.

Edit: Now they are directly above my area (Minami Horie) and there are lots of police sirens. Go geeks...go go go! The suspense is killing me!

Some alien named Cyka:

[Cyka UchuuJin]

ahaha. i didn't do it! honest!!!

[Kagetsu]

some guy that I know said his cousins, half sisters mother, talked to her ex husband, who currently dating his secretary, who has asked her good friend who's working in a host bar in Hiroshima, who was talking to her boss on the mobile who was on his way through Shin-Osaka at the time on the Shinkansen, was told by a guy eating his melon bread filled with bean paste and dripping it on his work tie, that some idol is making a public debut... Emily?

[CrankyBastard]

Heard there was a fire in Osaka early this morning.
Could be something to do with it.

[ichigo partygirl]

Fire kills 15 in Osaka multi-tenant building (Japantoday)

Fifteen people were killed in a predawn fire at a multi-tenant building Wednesday in Osaka, firefighters said. Ten others were rescued—three of them seriously injured—as the blaze broke out in a video house on the first floor of the seven-story building in Naniwa Ward in Osaka city, they said, adding they received an emergency call at around 3 a.m.

All of the dead, found in individual rooms of the video house, were male customers, while nine men and one woman were rescued, according to firefighters. The cause of death seems to be carbon monoxide poisoning and inhalation burns, they said. The fire was put out in about an hour and a half after burning some 30 square meters of the floor, they said. There were 32 individual rooms—each measuring 1.5 meters wide and 2 meters deep—at the video house.

The video house manager said the fire might have started in one of the individual rooms. Some 20 customers are believed to have occupied the rooms.

The building is located in a downtown area near Namba Station operated by Nankai Electric Railway Co.

© 2008 Kyodo News

[Taro Toporific]

[Behan]

What is a "Video House"? Some kind of Japanese euphemism for a Wank House?

Kind of sounds that way. All the deceased are male, too. You would think buildings would be less flammable nowadays.

[dimwit]

Kind of sounds that way. All the deceased are male, too. You would think buildings would be less flammable nowadays.

Don't know about that. Dried spunk on the ceiling could go up pretty fast, but I'm not exactly the best person on this site to answer that question.

http://www.fuckedgaijin.com/forums/member.php?u=2478

[Yokohammer]

Fire started by friction, perhaps?

[Cyka UchuuJin]

[Mulboyne]

What is a "Video House"? Some kind of Japanese euphemism for a Wank House?

Mainichi:

...The shop manager was quoted as telling police that the fire started in one of its 32 individual rooms, each equipped with a bed and a television set. At the time, there were 26 customers and three employees on the premises. Most of the customers were apparently asleep...

[Cyka UchuuJin]

Reuters - Wednesday, October 1 03:09 am
TOKYO (Reuters) - A fire at a video store in downtown Osaka, west of Tokyo, killed 15 men and seriously injured four people, a spokeswoman at a local fire department said Wednesday.

About 120 firefighters and 40 fire engines battled the blaze on the first floor of a seven-storey building before dawn, the spokeswoman said. It was extinguished about 90 minutes later, she added.

The store, where customers can rent videos and view them in separate rooms, as well as shower, is often used like a cheap hotel to spend the night, domestic media said. The area has other small buildings, as well as bars and restaurants.

There were no immediate details of what caused the fire or how many people evacuated from the scene, she said. There were no damages to other buildings in the area, she added.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Jerry Norton)

[Behan]

Yahoo Japan has a Sankei Shinbun article saying that an unemployed man in his 40s was arrested for suspicion of arson.

http://dailynews.yahoo.co.jp/fc/local/osaka_namba_fire/?1222836624

[Cyka UchuuJin]

Yahoo Japan has a Sankei Shinbun article saying that an unemployed man in his 40s was arrested for suspicion of arson.

http://dailynews.yahoo.co.jp/fc/local/osaka_namba_fire/?1222836624

it doesn't give an address, does it? i have a general idea where that building is, but i'd like to go cycle past and be a gawker.

[Behan]

[Cyka UchuuJin]

thanks B! that'll give me somewhere else to cycle to tonight instead of making the evening gawking rounds in tobita.

[Behan]

Do you recognize the address?

It was on the news and the storefront had a big picture of cat's face, or eyes, on it.

[ghostunit]

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye3960646.html

It says a 46 year old man initiated the fire because "I got tired of living. I knew that if the store burned down other people may die too. I did it anyways".

At first he said he simply fell asleep while smoking, but after questioning by the police he stated the above.

Which, well... I don't doubt the craziness of nowadays Japanese suicidal people but on the other hand, isn't the J-police known for extortioning false confessions out of suspects? Is that a possibility or am I just mistaken?

[Cyka UchuuJin]

http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye3960646.html

It says a 46 year old man initiated the fire because "I got tired of living. I knew that if the store burned down other people may die too. I did it anyways".

At first he said he simply fell asleep while smoking, but after questioning by the police he stated the above.

Which, well... I don't doubt the craziness of nowadays Japanese suicidal people but on the other hand, isn't the J-police known for extortioning false confessions out of suspects? Is that a possibility or am I just mistaken?

'i got tired of living'...isn't that what the headcase that stabbed a bunch of people in akihabara said too?

[Cyka UchuuJin]

Do you recognize the address?

It was on the news and the storefront had a big picture of cat's face, or eyes, on it.

i know the general area, i'm sure it'd be easy enough to find. sadly i opted for the gym instead of going cycling down there.