Japan’s bear population have evidently had enough of the anime-loving humans they share the archipelago nation with, as one man is dead and another four have been wounded in four separate encounters this week, the highlight of which was a rampage through a Numata grocery store by a particularly agitated ursine who trashed the sushi counter and injured two shoppers, CBS reports.
“It entered from the main entrance and stayed inside for roughly four minutes. It almost climbed onto the fish case and damaged glass. In the fruits section, it knocked over a pile of avocados and stamped on them,” a manager told AFP after the Wednesday chaos. On the same day cops told NHK that a man was found dead of what appeared to be mauling on a mountain the northern Iwate region. On Tuesday a farmer in the Iwate region was scratched and bitten by a mama bear who was defending her cub from the man who had just stepped outside his house. That attack came two days after a Spanish tourist minding his own business at a bus stop in central Japan’s Shirakawa-go village was attacked without so much as even an unintentional provocation of the angry bastard.
The country’s environmental ministry’s stats reveal that, between April and September 2024, 108 people nationwide suffered injuries caused by bears, including five deaths.