February 28th, 1989. Media Koji Fukushima, Japan. A school teacher returned to her dorm to settle in for the night in her private bathroom. Something cut her off a man's shoe down in the pipe of the old fashioned toilet. Upon investigate, the teacher made a horrid discovery. A dead body of a man was stuck in the small septic tank. A truly strange case unfolded, and every time investigators collected a new piece of evidence, it only raised more questions than answers.
And as you can imagine, rumors began to swirl. The case has only recently gotten international attention thanks to the viral nature of the story. But what really happened and will we ever know? This is a study of strange. Good evening. Thank you for listening. I wanted to make one quick announcement. Tonight I am going to keep housekeeping to a minimum and save that for the end. The announcement is I have been researching a couple of UFO episodes. One will be next week. Another one?
I don't know when it will be. Maybe a month or so from now, but it made me realize it might be fun to do similar episodes of what I did with Terrifying Tales or Halloween specials of people sharing personal stories. So if you have an account, if you've witnessed something strange and unidentified in the sky, I would love to have you on the show. Please email me a study of strange at gmail.com.
Send me your stories or some information about an experience you had involving a UFO or unidentified aerial phenomena. I would love to have you on the show. I'm not sure when that episode will be made. It may be months from now, but I would love to start collecting those now and I am looking forward to it. So thank you. And now enjoy a very normal story of a dead body being found in a septic tank. Super normal. Not. Not strange at all. Enjoy. Welcome to the show.
I'm Michael May. And with me today, my guest is Amber Keating. Who is Amber, I should probably have you describe what you do because I'll probably misinterpret her or represent actually who and what you are. So why don't you tell everybody what you do for a living? Yes. Hello. I am a licensed clinical social worker and that means I am a mental health clinician. So I do therapy for a living. It's a great trick to use at a party to make people go away. Oh, yes and yes.
So I've been doing it for for a long time. I'm in private practice now, and I mainly work with people who have, like anxiety and trauma. Super fun stuff. Yeah, well, yes, well, well, thank you for doing what you do, because that is an important thing. And I wanted to have you on this episode because as the as the audience is just heard in the intro, this one's a bit of a doozy. And it involves a little bit of a trigger warning here.
It involves a dead body, which is kind of common for the crime elements in my show. So that's not unusual, sadly. But this does involve some gross things because it does involve human waste. But there also we will get into theories later on, but it might involve some kind of like fetishes or voyeurism or a lot of different things like that. And I honestly wanted somebody that understands the human behavior and psyche better than I do on the show.
So thank you so much for for coming on in this very weird, bizarre story. I'm a big fan of human behavior, so it's. And I will make a couple of points here before I dove into the story. So this test took place in Japan, and I did ask a friend of mine who taught in Japan for a few years to help just make sure I pronounce things correctly. And he actually pointed out that there are different ways to pronounce the names and places in this, depending on where you're from.
So he wasn't that much help. I was hoping for like one singular help. So I've tried my best. So if I do pronounce something incorrectly, I do apologize. I am trying my best, but I mispronounce things even from where I'm from. So it's going to happen. And the other thing is, most of the crime stories I do on my show, I like to really go overboard with research.
I like to find a lot of books and articles and and hopefully it's a topic that a lot of journalists that are better at being journalists than me have actually done research that I can sort of latch onto. This story is a bit more of like an Internet sensation. It's one of these things that's passed around on Reddit. There's a ton of YouTube videos about it, but there's not actually a lot of research in terms of like articles or books or things like that.
So I've had to kind of pick and choose what sources I feel seemed to be more realistic to kind of weed out some bad things. And I've also I did find some articles, but they're all from China or Vietnam. I did not find any articles from the United States. So there's a bit of like a trans like a Google translate or a version of that that kind of helped.
So if anybody out there listening has more information or hears me say things that, you know to be incorrect and you have some sort of valid resource for that, reach out to me at a study of stranger at Gmail dot com. I would love to hear that and do a follow up. Also some of the articles I just find this fascinating. This isn't actually that important, but a lot of the articles, they get the names different.
And even when you like read about this on Reddit or YouTube or all these other sites that have interesting mysteries, the names are always different and that kind of puts up a red flag for me of like, Wait, is this even true? Am I going to find out that this is some hoax online? It wouldn't really surprised me, but at the same time, there's enough out there that I'm like, No, no, no, this is true.
I think people are just not getting the best resources to corroborate the spelling of a name or something like that. And also the Chinese articles, I think they have a Chinese version of the Japanese name. So it's, it's like close enough, but it's in Chinese. So. Yeah, just interesting little little details. Yeah. And also one more thing, Amber and I apologize. Normally, I do recreations. I don't know if you listen to the any of the episodes or not.
You don't have to you don't don't feel obligated to. But I normally do some recreations which are a lot of fun, and I tried to write them for this episode and they all seem to be a little inappropriate because of the like content. So I am not doing recreations because it all seems like I was making fun of potential victims and I was like, I don't want to do that. It wasn't my intention, but it just kind of comes off that way. So we will not be doing recreations tonight. Everybody, I apologize.
So yeah, let's get into it again. Me getting into the crazy story here. So this happened on Sunday evening on February 28th, 1989, and the story takes place in Miccosukee Village in the Fukushima prefecture, which everybody knows because of the the nuclear fallout in Fukushima, Japan. The village merged with other villages in the area in 2005 to form a city called Tamura. And this area was evacuated when the power plant lockdown happened.
Obviously, our story takes place before that. But yeah, that that is the location of where this takes place. So there is a elementary school in the village called a W Village Elementary School and a teacher named Mummy Tanaka, who is 23 years old. She came back to her dorm. The teacher living quarters around 5 p.m. on this Sunday and she had taken four days off. She had a little herself, a little vacay. So she came back on Sunday and when she got home she went to use the toilet like we do.
And the toilet was in rural Japan at the time. And it may even still be like that today. I don't know. They were using squat toilets and for listeners in the United States, we're not as used to this, but it's essentially a little hole in the ground. You squat over to relieve yourself. And we're going to talk about plumbing a little bit. I apologize, Amber and everybody listening, but it is really important for the story.
So the squat toilet goes down, there's a pipe underneath it that's about 18 inches long that goes out into a little kind of like when you read about this online, they keep telling us septic tank, it's not a septic tank. It's just like a collection tank and it's U-shaped. So it kind of goes underground a little bit. And then on the outside of the dorm room wall outside, there's another pipe that comes up and it can open up.
And they come out and they clean it every so often by attaching some sort of huge utility device of some kind to it. So she she went to use the toilet and when she was getting ready to use it, she saw in the pipe was a man's shoe and she lives alone. It's her private bathroom. No one else uses the bathroom. The shoe, I don't think probably could even fit down into the pipe from the toilet itself. I'm just assuming on that. But she was very weirded out by this as one would be.
So she goes outside and checks to the other end of the pipe and it's open and she looks inside and she sees human feet. So she immediately panics. She gets guys from the guys dorm, she gets friends from the girls dorm. She gets all these people to come out and check this. And, you know, just this is just weird. So who knows how I would behave in this situation. And everybody sees the person they're kind of grossed out. There's no response.
And they eventually call the police, the authorities now the toilet. I got to give some some sighs to this because, again, this is important for the story. But again, it's a U-shaped. There are visuals in my show notes. There are visuals that have been shared across online. So check out my show notes to actually see some links for this. The pipes, the pipe from outside that goes vertically down is 42 inches tall. And it's 14 inches wide.
I don't know that in the metric system, but I should have looked up centimeters as well. And inside the sort of bottom part that goes horizontally is 49 inches long and then it's 18 inches. I went to the toilet. It's small. The point of this is it's small. Check out the visual references. Everybody just because it it helps. It's not easy for a person to get in there. And that's what the first strange bit about this case is. How could a person get in to a pipe that is that small?
Because you can't extend yourself. You can't turn around once you're in there. Also being the U-shape, it's like, how do you get from the vertical part into the horizontal? Like it's. Just. Very, very bizarre and small and cramped. And when the authorities showed up, they immediately could tell that the man inside was dead. And so they tried to grab on to him.
I'm assuming, by the legs, because that's the part by the opening, they can't get him out and they try and they're trying to try and they can't get him out. They call the fire department. Fire department shows up. They can't get him out. Eventually they have to get an excavator to dig up the pipe. They lift it up with a crane. They try to get him out again. They can't get him out still. So they had to cut the pipe open to get this man out. Was it? Yeah. Yeah. And so the body was found.
Once they cracked it open, they saw him. He was in a fetal position on his back. So he is I wish everybody could see me. It's kind of hard to. Like. Do this, but yeah, Ambers trying to act it out as well. So he's on his back. And his feet because of how short it is. 49 inches his legs are basically like up in the fetal position area so that so yeah. There you go. There you go. I was getting in it and on his chest is his jacket. So he's folded his jacket like very nicely and put it on his chest.
It was about I think it was negative two degrees Celsius when they found him or that was the average temperature. I forget what the exact thing was. But it's point is, it's very cold in this area of Japan. This time of year. It is winter. And he didn't have shoes on because there was that one shoe in the tank, the other shoe which we will get into a little bit more in a moment. But the other shoe is nowhere to be found. It's not outside the pipe. It's not outside on the ground.
It's not on his body. It's nowhere. Now, there are conflicting reports, depending on what you read. Some say that the guy was naked with the jacket on, is on his chest. Most of the articles, though, say his pants were on. He just was sort of shirtless and jacket on his chest. So I don't know what it is, but but there you go. Now some details immediately come into question, as I'm sure you probably have questions, too, Amber. So many. So many.
So the average Japanese man at the time is had a width of shoulder width of 16 inches the pipe to get in, had a diameter of 14 inches. So it's not impossible. I can I can even kind of make myself smaller right now and squeeze into something, but it's not, again, not easy and you got to go straight down. And they kind of do a quick 90 degree turn to get into this pipe. So how did somebody fit in? There is the first question.
The other question is, if he's shoeless, why is there one in the tank and the one in the tank is up by his head because it was underneath the toilet part and he would have had to put that shoe in first. So that's just a bizarre thing of why put your shoe in there and the other one is missing. So the forensics team had to clean the man twice. I can only imagine. And they concluded that the cause of death was suffocation brought on by cold and cramp ness.
Now, most of these things, if you're on Reddit or all these other sites that share stories like this, most of the time it's reported as he freeze to death and then people come up with little conspiracies and theories that like, well, if he was in a tank like this, he would die from suffocation first because of all the methane and all this kind of stuff. He would he would die from breathing before he would freeze to death. But he actually did die by suffocation first.
And people kind of have that incorrect. And I got that from one of the newspaper articles. So he died of suffocation brought on by cold and dampness. Again, not the best sources, though, so I'm happy to be wrong on that. But so that's kind of my deduction in this. There are no signs of trauma, meaning like he had a couple of bruises on like an elbow or something, but he wasn't all cut up and his face wasn't beat up and scrapes and everything else.
So you can imagine from trying to fit into a small, cramped pipe, but because he didn't have the trauma, it's kind of quickly assumed that he got in there himself. They also believe that he was dead for about two days. Or. So, depending on the source, either the authorities or Yumi Tanaka identified the deceased man if she identified him first or if authorities identified him first.
I don't know if it really matters, but the point is, is they were able to identify him and Yumi, the girl knew him and his name was Kono Naoki. And he was 26 years old and he was a reputable young man. He was a sales manager at the Nuclear Power Plant Maintenance Company. He was a member of local clubs and around town. And people generally really liked him and thought highly of him. And he was depending again on sources.
I have to say that a lot today he was either friends with Yumi or Friendly, like some sort of an associate of humans of some kind, an acquaintance. That's a better, better word there. Word on the street is that he helped her when another man had been harassing her, like via phone calls and stuff like that. Apparently, Kono Naoki had supported her and helped her and her boyfriend kind of deal with whatever the harassment is.
I don't have a lot of details on that, but that does come up in a lot of the research over and over again that he was of help to her. So yeah, I can't confirm how close they were, but they did know each other. Now, when Kono Naoki was found, it pointed to him having gotten into the septic tank on purpose, which is already kind of what I'm leaning towards. But just to say it vocally out loud, he was not forced. They found his car nearby, unlocked keys left in the car.
Kono had told his father that he was running errands on the 24th. So that's four days prior to being found. And he wasn't reported missing because his family was quick to point out he's 26, he's an adult. Like he goes out sometimes and goes places. So we're not going to report. A missing is 26 years old. And all of this calculating, all of this kind of everything adds up to kind of a simple conclusion that the police came to, which is he got in the tank by himself on purpose to peep potentially.
It was that he was a peeper. He wanted to spy on a woman using the toilet. And he got in there and got stuck and that's why he died. However, there are some in the town, including his parents, that petitioned the police to reopen the case and investigate it more because of a lot of the bizarre things involved. And the police refused to investigate any further. So the case was kind of closed that he just died because he got stuck trying to peep on somebody. Oh, so Amber, there's the basis of it.
There's there is some more to this, but there's the the general. How. Set up for this story. So do you have any questions, anything you want to bring up right now before. We go northwest? I don't think so. I'm just I'm so fascinated. Like I really want to know what happened to this guy. You've asked him like, dude, what are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. So here's where it gets weird. And if it's not weird already weird. Yeah. Here's. Here's where it gets weirder.
See, that's a better translation. That's good. His other shoe was found a couple hundred meters away by a stream. Oh, yeah. It's not right there. It's not by the car. It's not on the other side of the pipe. It's hundreds of meters away. Very strange. And again, I already said this earlier, but like the one shoe in the tank would have had to go in first. Hmm. So the shoes are a big kind of piece of evidence to this case to just make it very odd and.
And doesn't make it so succinct to just be like, oh, this guy just climbed in there because he wanted to peep and died. Now you got. It. I wasn't going to bring this up yet, but I kind of think I will just talk about the shoes. So there are some theories that suggest that he might have been chased by somebody. And the shoe is a big part of that, because what if you're running, you're trying to get away from somebody, your shoe falls off, but you just keep going.
And then the tank could have been just the first hiding place he saw is like, oh, they're not going to look into a waste receptacle. They're not going to do that. So I'm just going to jump in there. Doesn't explain everything. Yeah, yeah. But it definitely. Does. Like it's one of the only theories that actually kind of explains the shoe being found so far away. Right. And do you think Tom, Cinderella was. Yeah, Peeping Tom. Cinderella two. That's a movie. That's a movie right there.
The Peeping Tom. Cinderella does well in Hollywood. We get a picture that is going to be going to be submitted to it. There's a Netflix special in there somewhere. So the size of the tank in the pipes, I listed them before and everybody can kind of go in my shownotes to see them. But his shoulders were two inches wider than the diameter, so we would add a squeeze in there.
His family wanted to sort of put this to the test because she does he they don't believe that he is a peeping tom and would have crawled into something full of human waste just to peep on somebody. So they actually bought the same pipe to test it out and they had somebody about the size of Kono Naoki try to climb in and he couldn't do it. They could not replicate somebody getting into the pipe. Wow. So that brings up the question, did he climb in there himself. Or. Was he forced.
Wow. Dun dun dun dun. Uh. Hey, all, I wanted to take a quick second to tell you about Audible. Now, if you listen to podcast, you've probably heard other hosts promote Audible, just like I'm doing now. But there's good reason for that. I use it and I love it. Now Audible is an audiobook and podcast service that let you enjoy all of your listening entertainment in one place.
Once I became a parent, I became an avid user because I spend my time listening to audible titles while I'm cleaning my son's room or basically any sort of parenting task or errand. Right now, I'm listening to The Coming of the Saucers by Kenneth Arnold because I'm doing a little UFO research for the show. Audible membership gives all members a chance to discover new favorites and new formats like Words Plus, which is an exclusive music series.
And new members can try audible for free for 30 days. Right now, get full access to the growing selection of originals podcast, everything, every genre you can imagine. It's all there. Just visit audible trail dot com slash strange for your free 30 days again that's audible trail dot com slash strange Thank you. There are no shortage of theories floating around. One of my favorite things in this, because this is all like online research. There's no books or anything.
Again, reading comments, is it? I always I basically try to refrain from ever reading comments of anything online because it's terrible. But I was trying just to find more information and like, does anybody else have a link to somewhere else? And occasionally you would come across something that did help in my research.
But there are a lot of comments of people that have theories that I feel like they'll read the first paragraph and not the rest of the story because they'll be like, Oh, this is definitely what happened. And it's like, Oh, if you just kept reading, you would find that that's that's not the case. But there is there are some, some interesting theories that people put put forward. And I'll just go on to those now. Or do you want to jump into a theory?
Amber I feel like I've just talked to the whole time. I'm just like, I'm flabbergasted. Yeah. What? That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to change my mind here. I'm going to do this a little bit different. Then I'm going to go over some of the other theories a bit later.
What I want to talk about with you specifically is some people online have suggested there are interesting fetishes in the world and there is a stereotype with Japan where there are sort of like weird or unique fetishes in Japan. And I do not judge anybody for that. But there are I actually looked up terms for this. So there's voyeurism, which is part of it. I think everybody knows about voyeurism, but there's also an I don't know if I'm going to say this right.
Coprophilia. That sounds right coprophilia Okay. And that's excitement and interest in feces is the way I read it. Is that did you do you ever do you have to study. Things like that when you. Were. I doing ADR? Oh, really. I know it. I've never worked with anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not my specialty, but. Yes, yes.
I actually wish that would be amazing, especially for this podcast to be like, Oh my, my friend is a specialist in coprophilia and there's also cluster philia, which I probably said that wrong too. But I think everybody can kind of deduce what that is. It's a it's an interest or sexual interest in confinement. So there are various fetishes. They kind of may lead somebody to want to actually put themselves in a potentially life threatening, dangerous and gross situation. I wouldn't do that
myself. Right. But really to each their own, I suppose. Each their own. Yeah, I guess so. And when I was looking into this and I may have this may have been a comment I wish I had wrote down where I saw this list. Either it could have been my idea, but I may not have been smart enough to come up with this. I wrote this down, though, is that the shoe could have been put in first as a way, just like block his face when she's using the toilet or even hide it, because I think it was a black shoe.
So it like helps hide him in the shadows of the pipes, potentially. Well, that interesting one because I was trying to think like, why? Why on earth wouldn't the shoe go in first? What? Yeah, yeah. That does not compute. But that seems feasible. If feasible, I don't I still don't know if that's right or not, but it's something it's some kind of guess. And why the shoe was in there, the jacket, he folded up the jacket and sort of tucked it.
If you can see me kind of like tucked up like this across the him. And I mean, do you have any ideas on that? Because I'm all out of ideas. No. I mean, I'll just say we watched the mummy the other day and saw the original. Yeah. And that, that, that is just the image that it's conjuring up is the person going into the sarcophagus. Yes. And the Boris Karloff one is that when you're talking about. Yes, I see Boris Karloff. Yeah, I think it's Boris. Carrie probably I'm terrible with. Yeah name.
Is. Some people have brought up that like he did that to keep warm but I'm like but he's not wearing ring it I mean yeah you get it a little bit of warmth from that. Could it be to keep it clean which may lead in to like the hiding theory of like hiding from somebody if he just like took it off to try to keep it clean and go in there or he was just trying to keep it clean. So when he gets out, no one sees himself smaller. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it. Definitely.
The jacket thing is the reason I don't believe he was ever forced in and I'll get into some of those theories later. But there are people in these a lot of like local rumors that he was killed on purpose and forced in there. And I think the jacket kind of debunks all those theories because it was so neatly done that he's not going to get forced in there and he doesn't have room to take off his jacket inside of it.
So it's like it it's just a weird thing to take it off and neatly folded on top of you. Yeah. Oh, this is such a weird one, Amber. It's such a have I have you in such a weird episode because I don't even know where to go with some of this stuff. It's just like, I have to share this with somebody. So the world listen to me as I get befuddled and all these weird things. Do you want to hear some of the other theories? Yes, please. All right. All right.
So these some of these are kind of fun and talk about Hollywood with, you know, the peeping Tom. What's what? Cat. I just already forgot the game I ruined. That whole joke is I forgot the name of the Cinderella. There we go. People are. Really people. People read the paper in them. So the first could be. Murder. From. You mean Tanaka herself? Hmm. So a lot. Of people would jump to this because they allegedly knew each other and maybe had some sort of actuation with.
Or maybe there is a love triangle. People have brought that up because she did have a boyfriend and she they all knew each other. So there could have been some kind of love triangle. And the theory is that she took his shoe, threw it in the tank to be like, oh, your shoe fell in the tank. And he went in to get his shoe. And then she, like, kept him from getting back up and he eventually died. I just. Yeah, again, the jacket. The jacket doesn't fit there.
Not only that, but if someone if my shoe fell in to a septic tank or whatever you want to call it, there's there's human waste in there. I'm just going to get another shoe or go barefoot. I'm not going to be like, Oh, yeah, I better. Go get it. Right. That and it doesn't explain why the other shoe. And the shoe so far away.
Hundreds of meters away. Yes. And even if you take that out, so maybe let's say she didn't throw the shoe in or whatever, a lot of people do think that she she may have killed him or beat him up or something and then forced him into the pipe. But again, there's no there's no evidence that he was beat up. There's no, you know, of anything like that. And I think she would have had to have help to get him in there. So there's one other person and people don't keep secrets.
So if there's more than one person doing a crime, I feel like eventually somebody is going to say something and that hasn't happened. And people even claim that like finding him proves that she did it because like she found him in a weird way, like she checked the pipe herself. Like, if you see a shoe down there, why are you going to go look in the pipe? Which that is a good question. But like, that doesn't mean there's not enough in there to connect it.
Like, show me more evidence before you're like, Yeah, you killed him because she found a shoe in the toilet. It's like there's just a big jump in and start there. And the deal is to like we we love to tell stories. The human brain is a storyteller. So we see things and think, oh, there might be a pattern there or a connection, and we are going to run with it, whether it is founded in truth or not. So I think we're seeing a lot of that here already.
Like you're hitting one of my favorite topics, just like a general kind of theme is seeing how our brains suddenly come up with not just conspiracy. It doesn't have to be some major conspiracy, but rumors and ideas and theories. And like the more questions there are, the more we kind of go as humans, we all do it. But like, they just it just goes haywire. So like the. Idea that, like, there's a love triangle here and that's why he died. And it's like, what, where? Where?
You show me some evidence to that. You're just jumping to that and on that. Mark So the other big theory that people have floating about on the Internet, web webs of surf waves of the Internet is that he was silenced by politicians. So here we go into the brain trying to create stories because this is so weird. And who would climb into a pipe like that? It's got to be the politicians taking them out.
So the the information floating around out there is that there was a mayoral election taking place at the time in the village. And so they're kind of Naoki supported someone named Tadashi Ro, one Tanabe, who was kind of like a village politician of some kind, and he was running for the ultimate, ultimate local political role. And rumor is that Tadashi Ro was buying votes. And, you know, Yuki withdrew his support because of that.
And so because the politicians found out that he was withdrawing his support and found out about what they were doing, they asked him. So that's the rumor. There's some other little stories around that, like a coworker of Naoki had committed suicide a month before. And people assume that's also because, like, he didn't actually commit suicide. He discovered something sinister going on.
And on the 24th, which is the night I think he left home, there was a work dinner and some sort of disagreement happened, leading some to think that his employer may have even killed him. These things are like mentioned with no evidence whatsoever, like all of these things or just like pure rumor speculation. Again, creating stories like you said, it is fascinating where our minds go with these things.
Yeah, we need to tell stories so badly that we will be like, Well, this is obviously what happened or what is happening because I need to tell a story and the story makes me feel good, even if it's not true. Yeah. And we have to tell stories so much that we create our own podcasts. To. There is as much as I'm, I don't buy into these like rumors and stuff or conspiracies again. So I'm just going with very little information.
So I don't even want to allow myself to go down that, that route of believing political, you know, or politicians offing somebody or paying people off or an employer killing a worker. But I do think it is interesting that the police didn't reopen the case or investigate more when when there were locals and they actually signed a petition. I think it was like thousands of people signed a petition for the police to actually investigate this further because they did write it off very quickly.
They're like, Oh, some guy and some people. That's it. Going to find the paper, let's go home. And so I do kind of think like maybe maybe there is something to them just kind of writing it off too quickly. It is so bizarre that I feel like time should have been spent on it. But again, I don't know these police officers, they did. Maybe they're very smart and very good, so I don't want to assume too much there, but it does just on the surface, it feels like they wrote it off too quickly.
Yeah. Like somebody wasn't asking all the questions. They were just like, Oh, well, let's be people. Then we have our story. We're closing the case as opposed to, you know, say, a detective like Columbo bride be like, well, you know, but why is this little thread over here on the carpet or whatever. Exactly Columbo should have been. I would have loved an episode of Columbo are just a pitch meeting. I want a writer to be like, All right, here's what I'm going to do, guys.
Some guys found in a septic tank and Columbo's got. To figure out why. Yes, I don't think I don't think. They would have gone for that, but it would have been fun. It would have been fun. So another theory is that there was some kind of version of suicide. It's a it's not the way I want to go. If I. Do that, I'm. Really. Yeah, unless unless you happen to be somebody who is into, you know, feces or drive find spaces and that's how you want to die.
I mean, that's kind of the question because if I saw a pipe that small and in that shape, I would have to know that I might get stuck like there is a danger here. It's freezing outside, I might get stuck. And so yeah. So if it is some sort of suicide thing, I guess if that's what you like, it's like, hey, I'm going to go out on top kind of thing. Like, is. That. Kind of thinking in that situation? I don't know. Right. Well, it reminds me of autoerotic asphyxiation. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I know people who will in some way choke themselves and then accidentally. Yeah. In order to get excited. Yeah. Yeah. I have to ask, is your husband in the same room with you? Right now? No, I was going to say, this has got. To be the weirdest thing because he can't hear my end of this. This has got to be the weirdest listening, right?
Yeah. And and then the other theory, I actually already mentioned this earlier just because I felt it was appropriate to bring up, but the sort of someone could have been after on and he ran, lost a shoe, chased and head. If I was running from somebody for my life, I would be willing to get into, you know, a tank full of feces, you know, because I'd rather live and be covered in shit than get killed, you know. I true that. So if he was, how. Did he get in. Yeah.
And also. Yeah. And you can't get it I would imagine you can't get in there fast like it's going to take a bit to kind of squirm around and. Yeah, and he took off at least his jacket, maybe even more clothes depending on where you. Really folded it. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't. And also there would have to be there's an I do believe in coincidences, but there'd be a big coincidence that he also knew Yumi Tanaka. It is a dorm, but it's like her private bedroom, her private toilet.
And that's the only toilet connected to, to that tank. So yeah, he might have, he might have just wanted to catch a peek I. Guess. Had kind of super gross. This is a gross episode. I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, man, I feel bad for inviting you on this episode now. But it's it's. Like. I was. I was even worried ahead time, like, oh, god, what am I doing? What am I doing with this one?
But it's just it's fascinated me ever since I first read about it and I was like, I just have to I have to cover it. But it is it reminds me of the oh, sorry, the Netflix docu series that was about the Cecil Hotel. Yeah. Yeah. Is that where the Internet went crazy? Yeah. That was a huge I remember when that first came out, I was reading about that forever. I was so excited. They made a doctor's series about that, everything else, and I've listened to a lot of podcast on that.
Alyssa LAMB I think that's her name is Lisa LAMB or Alissa LAMB, and that that's actually a nice comparison because she maybe we don't know, but she got in that water tank on top of the hotel which like, why are you doing that? You know. Like, yeah, there's. There's questions about behavior that I don't understand, right? I was like, was there some other mental illness going on? And I don't know. I mean, because I'm coming from the US or Western framework anyway.
Yeah. Like what diagnoses look like and I really have no idea what mental health treatment or diagnosis looks like in other countries or cultures. So I'd be so fascinated. Like. Yeah, I mean I. I don't even know what to ask you in this, but I feel like there's something here of this maybe, and it totally inappropriate even. QUESTION But like if you if you had a client of some kind. Client Sorry, patient, patient. Patient. Client. Client patient a client patient.
But if you had a patient that you found out and I'm not saying deceased or anything, but like someone claimed suddenly lived in a crawl space of a house for two days or something like that is. Yeah. Is there some sort of mental disorder or condition that would make people just want to be in some sort of confined dark space alone. In the. Cool clinical trial?
I just yeah, at least it doesn't make sense to me, but that's where we get into what is going on in that person's psyche that might make them want to do something like that or think they want to. Because I'm going to places like psychosis where we hear voices or see things that other people can't see. You're here. I don't want to disregard the potential of spirit, the spiritual realm. But what was he hearing? Voices or seeing things chasing him? I didn't.
Maybe it didn't exist. I don't. Know. Yeah. That's the biggest missing piece of this. It's not evidentiary type details are definitely missing in the kind of research that I think we can get access to, unless some local from the area can go and get police reports and whatever and actually start releasing more really specific details. But I honestly feel like I want to know more about him.
To me, my own personal theory is I do think he was there was some sort of sexual satisfaction that he was going for in this situation. And no matter how bizarre or weird that may be to the rest of us. So, yeah. What what else was going on in his life? What was he like? Was he was he dealing with anything else psychologically that we don't know about being this far away and not having access to all the details?
I would be more interested in that than like how how exactly far away was his you you know, or were there dogs that you'd choose in the neighborhood? And if he. Knew, you mean. Why did he go to the toilet like two days before she was home? Because she was out of town. Like if he knew her, did he did he not know she was out of town? There's weird questions like that that people bring up that I'm like, I honestly would just I just care more about him. First, I want to learn.
Yes, those are important details, but I want to know more about him because I feel like that's where a lot of the answers may lie in this. And unfortunately, we just. Don't have those. Answers even in him in relation to the community. Like like you said, there's this idea that he was friendly with you and perhaps her boyfriend. And so what was. Yeah, just there's, there's so much missing. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll have more.
And honestly that's where listeners, when, where you come in is if you have a way to research this more, reach out to people or you've found actual things more than just some like five or six Chinese articles I found with really bad translations. And more than just people, people posting, I'd read it. If you have more information, please send me an email. A study of stranger at gmail.com, because I would love to do a follow up. This is it's just so fascinating.
It's captivated everybody's imaginations because of how bizarre and gross. Like, there's this combination of just like, interesting things to this. There's a there's a sexual aspect to it, potentially. There's a psychological aspect. There's a gross factor to it. So, yeah, if anybody knows anything out there more to this case, please email and we will do a follow up, maybe even have you on the show. Whoever found it, we can do a follow up there be so much fun. But yeah, that is it.
Amber, this is a shorter story than one of my deep dove. True crime. I wanted to do like a palate cleanser after doing ghost stories all October. I love it. And I thought this. One would be kind of. A palate cleanser. Good, good. Yeah, yeah. And I. Don't know if I really. Thought that through that it's a bad figure of speech. When I was when I was writing my note. So I was like, this case, I wish I had more information or like new light or new theories to present. And I don't.
But I just found it so fascinating that I wanted I literally wrote down Dove in and I was like, I can't write that it. I can't write that in my notes. That is that is just awful. Head first. Head first. Yeah, this was a weird one. And again, I wanted to do my age. I have these like short recreation scenes which are so much fun to do in these stories. And just everything seemed inappropriate because there's I think if we knew more if we knew more details, I think we could do some of those.
But but otherwise, I feel like you're doing justice to the like the people involved. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I love finding interesting stories online and weeding through. To find the consistencies is what I did when I researched this, and it made it even more interesting. It didn't make it less interesting to go down that rabbit hole. It made it more interesting and raised. It's like the rabbit hole never ends. Yeah, and no, it never, never does. But I love it. But thank you, Amber, so much.
I will have to have you on for another episode in the future that that doesn't involve human waste and strange. But you. Know I think. If we're going to go after dogs of the super strange end of season behavior, this is it. Is it. And look. If you end up thinking about it more and have some sort of bizarre theory or something, you know, we'll do a follow up, a quick little anecdote or something. So sounds like it might be like chewing on this for a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you want to share anything about where people might find you, or do you want people to follow you on anything? Yeah, well, I mean, we've all been through a tough couple of years now with the whole COVID thing, so I'm helping a lot of folks manage our collective invitee around all of those types of things and and the stresses in our lives. You can follow me on Instagram.
I am at amber dot says dot shine and my website is pacific mft dot com slash amber dash keating which let's imagine we could put right down somewhere. Yeah. Now I'll put those in the show notes for everybody and please pick it up. You do great work. And Amber, I didn't say that at top of the show, but Amber is a good friend of mine and my families. And so is your your husband, John, who I will have to on for a murder mystery. I got to find a good one for him to be on, but I really appreciate it.
And again, I went into today having some anxiety myself about like this one is just kind of gross. I hope Amber isn't upset with this, but it is an interesting story. So I really do appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do this and bringing some some light to it and bringing up really good questions that I think tie into other things that I'm interested in in the world of mystery. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. This was it was a lot of fun.
I mean, a great topic, honestly, because I am endlessly fascinated by the really out of the ordinary lens. Out of the ordinary. That's a good that's maybe a good title for this one. Thank you so much. And that's our show. Thank you so much for listening. This is a study of strange and that was definitely a strange case. I wish that I had more information on that. And like I said in the show, if you do have information on that case of the Fukushima man, please email study of strange at gmail.com.
I want to give a big shout out and thank you to everybody that participated in my Halloween specials, Terrifying Tales and also Tom Holland for his interview around Halloween next week, though I'm very excited to announce that we're going to be covering a UFO case, and I feel like this is me dip in my toes into some UFO stories because I don't know them as well as I do. Other strange mysteries. So tune in next week for a UFO case. Make sure to subscribe, rate and review the show.
Check us out on Patriot and you can find all of the show notes and information at WW. WW A Study of Strange Tor.com Thank you and goodnight.