A YouTuber with 2.4 million subscribers yesterday apologized after a video of him and three others free-riding around Japan became the latest example of fame-seeking foreigners riling locals.
The YouTuber known by the username Fidias posted a video over the weekend of the four riding trains and buses around Japan — in some cases without paying.
In the video, Fidias hides in a toilet of a bullet train, pretends to be ill when confronted by a ticket collector, and then escapes to board another train where he pulls the same trick.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Another clip shows him entering a hotel and pretending to be a guest to get free breakfast.
“I just [got] access to a five-star Japanese buffet. And we’re leaving the hotel without getting caught and without any problem,” he triumphantly tells the camera.
Other parts of the video show the four, one of whom appears to be the YouTuber Night Scape who has 1.7 million followers, begging money from locals to pay for tickets.
It was unclear when the footage was shot or whether the three men and one woman were still in Japan.
“Another strange, annoying YouTuber from abroad emerged. In addition to this guy Fidias, the three others should be arrested,” one social media user said in Japanese.
“Surprisingly, comments section to his [online post] is full of applause. [Police] should arrest him to prevent copycat crimes from happening,” another social media user said.
Regional train operator JR Kyushu said it was studying the footage before deciding whether to inform the police.
“We are aware of the case and investigating facts around it,” a spokesman said.
Fidias posted an apology on his channel, saying: “Hello beautiful people i apologize to the Japanese people if we made them feel bad that was not our goal! from now on i am going to be make more research to the cultures we go to and try to prevent this from happening again.”
The incident came a month after Japanese police arrested a US livestreamer known as Johnny Somali for allegedly trespassing into a construction site.
According to video footage, Ismael Ramsey Khalid, 23, wore a mask and repeatedly shouted “Fukushima” to construction workers who urged him to leave the site, police officer Genta Hayashi said, referring to the stricken nuclear power plant.
Another clip shows Khalid, who describes himself as a former child soldier, harassing train passengers with references to the US atomic bombings of Japan in 1945.
Khalid has only 12,500 followers on YouTube and 10,800 on another platform known as Kick, where his account is marked “offline.”
His Twitch account was reportedly taken down.
In 2017, US YouTuber Logan Paul attracted controversy with a video he posted of a dead body in a Japanese “suicide forest” that drew 6 million views before being taken down.
Incidents of foreigners behaving badly, including by drinking in public and littering, are a regular cause of annoyance in largely law-abiding Japan, not least on Mount Fuji.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS