Japanese man arrested after pretending to be foreigner while trying to rob convenience store

Attempt to pass himself off as a foreigner reveals possible link to another crime too .

In the early morning hours of August 18, at around 2:30 a.m., a lone man walked into the Oizumi Yoshida branch of Japanese convenience store chain Lawson in the town of Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture .

The only other person in the store at the time was the branch’s 50-something year-old manager, who was working the register. ▼ The store where the incident took place The man approached the counter, but instead of making a purchase, he pulled out a knife and demanded the manager hand over the cash in the register .

Actually, “demand” is probably too harsh a word, since even though the man was obviously attempting to commit armed robbery, his exact words were: “Okane wo kudasai.” This is an odd choice of words to be using mid-crime, though the first part is fine.

Kane is the Japanese word for “money,” and adding the honorific o to the front of it technically does make it a more polite expression, but it also helps differentiate it from the other possible meanings of kane , such as “metal,” so when talking about money a lot of people default to using okane even when they’re not necessarily trying to sound elegant.

What makes “ Okane wo kudasai ” a weird thing to say while you’re threatening someone’s life, though, is that kudasai means “please.” Kudasai isn’t an intimidating or forceful way of speaking, and in getting victims to do what they want them to, most criminals tend to see soft-touch expressions and bladed instruments as an either/or choice in getting people to do what they want them to.

Even stranger, in addition to the unnatural vocabulary, the would-be robber also pronounced the words in a stiff, unnatural way . ▼ “Casey, is this just another of your excuses to talk about Japanese linguistics ?” you may be asking, but I promise you, this is all going somewhere.

The mixture of polite speech and implied violence was not enough to convince the convenience store manager to hand over the cash, though, and when he refused to comply/oblige, the man fled the scene.

However, using forensic evidence and security camera footage, police investigators were able to determine his identity as that of Atsushi Goto , a 32-year-old resident of Isesaki, another town nearby in Gunma.

What’s more, just one day earlier, on the 17th, a man had robbed a different convenience store in Isesaki of 30,000 yen (US$190) with the exact same method : flashing a knife at the register and saying “ Okane wo kudasai .” Officers placed Goto under arrest near his home, and he has already admitted to the attempted robbery in Oizumi.