Japanese man lives in Mexico City airport

Japanese citizen Hiroshi Nohara flew to Mexico City airport three months ago, and has stayed in the airport ever since. He survives on handouts and sleeps in a chair. He is said to be "foul-smelling."

The Tokyo native flew into Mexico with a tourist visa and a return ticket home, but he never left the airport. In an interview Thursday alongside the airport McDonald's, he said he had no motive for his extended stay and doesn't know how much longer he'll remain.
"I don't understand why I'm here," he said through a visiting interpreter originally hired by a television station. "I don't have a reason."
The embassy can't force him to leave, and since Nohara's visa is valid all Mexican officials can do it wait for it to expire in early March.
During his stay, Nohara's wiry goatee has grown into a scraggly mass. His red-tinted hair is speckled with dust and dandruff, and his cream-colored jacket and fleece blanket are dingy with overuse. He smells like he hasn't had a shower in months.
"He's a calm person, a nice man," said Silvia Navarrete del Toro, an airport janitor. "He just sits here and eats all day."

Japanese man makes Mexico airport home (Via Arbroath)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Paul Raven

Mayagrafix – I remember by time in Mexico with great fondness, it’s a beautiful country filled with amazing people. That said, the one part of it I really wouldn’t want to see again is the airport of El D.F… that guy must be pretty keen not to go back home to be still sitting there. Either that or the taxi hustlers scared him so bad he didn’t dare leave…
Halloween Jack

Condolences in advance to the people who have to share an airplane cabin with him on the flight back.
Anonymous

In the US or UK he’d be taken to a laboratory and dissected for unusual or antisocial behavior. The fact that he is calm and pleasant would be construed as evidence of his psychopathic nature. It’s a good thing for him that he chose to live in a Mexico airport and not an American one.
Mojave

Does the dude have a job waiting for him back in Tokyo? It’s like something from a J.G. Ballard story.
Takuan

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/30/bbtv-tokyo-through-t.html
Jesse in Japan

He probably plans to write a book about it when he returns to Japan. He’ll make good money. Hell, it sounds like something a character in a Murakami Haruki novel would do.
janekm

Perhaps he (believed he) was chased by the Yakuza and figured the safest place would be in an airport outside of Japan. Took the first plane he could get out of Japan and then stayed in the airport.
Takuan

Being There
pedro001

Doesn’t this sound similar to the story of “Sir, Alfred Mehran”, who spent nearly 18 years in the Charles de Gaulle airport in paris?
pollyannacowgirl

Why wouldn’t he at least try to wash himself? That’s what makes me think he is mentally ill.
mayagrafix

This is a real hoot to say the least for me. Non withstanding any comparison to the tom hanks / steven spielberg movie “the terminal”, this Japanese dude could not have picked a better airport for the task.ut

I live in the southern part of Mejico, and avoid the city of Mexico like the plague. But only because it has become a mega city with mega problems, the hommies are real nice and polite, and the weather used to be primo. Once upon a time the DF (as its know here) was a real dream spot akin to L.A.

So this guy picked the one place on earth were destitute is a social class (maybe India also) and the socialist background of the government (from the 1910 revolution) gives him all kinds of advantages. He is making a statement about what was and what is now, how the social gains have lost to modern capitalization and the authorities cannot do one iota about it. His visa expires in march. Ha ha!

Muchos kudos to airport man 2008. !viva mexico!
Takuan

folks, he’s just a bum. If you met him in Tokyo with a hundred like him, you wouldn’t even notice.
He has his story like us all. Kudos to him for getting a ticket together and doing something different. I suspect he’s having a better time of it than if a Mexican bum somehow got himself to Narita…. (now where did I put that…)
Antinous

That voice-over was painful. Are they sending journalists to a lab where they remove all normal inflection from their voices and make them sound like robots?
Takuan

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=XL-OHdLIw_I

(much better subtitled)
nerdkiller

I don’t like people from Japan.
Anonymous

@6 – Destitute is a social class in America too, it’s just kept hidden from the public eye out of shame. I’d imagine it’s a social class in most countries, regardless of their level of development.
misshallelujah

@18 — I had the exact same thought about Murakami Haruki!
Takuan

‘s ok, they don’t like you either
BastardNamban

Ah, this guy. I saw him on TV here today, they did a Japanese interview with him- he’s made friends with terminal workers, and NHK too kept drawing similarities between him and Tom Hanks in Terminal.

Go to parks in Tokyo, especially Shibuya, I remember, and you’ll find plenty of homeless. This guy looks just like them, but he never gave a reason for staying in his Japanese interview either. He’s really popular there, though, and only the embassy seems to have a dislike for him- the terminal staff almost love the guy, and he signs autographs, and takes pictures with people.

There has to be a reason why he doesn’t want to return- my guess would be yakuza problems too, but it’s just as possible he lost his job. He could also just feel overburdened and disalussioned with Japanese social life, and is taking an international hiatus.
hobomike

So aside from looking like a prepubescent manga-girl with bad teeth, this is another way to get famous in Japan. Great. Maybe I’ll try and get back my citizenship. Manasamagambatte!
pedro001

Some of you might remember this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri

18 years at Charles de Gaulle. Vive la France!
pedro001

Oops, disregard my last comment. It’s the same as #19. There are two of us.
mistervega

@8 – awww, c’mon dude they have a big bowl of fugu waiting for you. baka yaro.
querent

takuan is my hero
Takuan

what’ve I done now?