Around noon on Aug. 13, in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture, a local apartment manager notified the police that a "suspicious foreigner" was hanging around the nearby JR train station.
Police officers duly descended upon someone described by the Asahi Shimbun as a "20-year-old male who came from the Philippines with a Japanese passport."
When asked what he was doing, he said he was meeting friends. When asked for his passport, he said he didn't have it on him. At this point, he would no doubt have tried to explain his dual citizenship ― something the police claim they only confirmed much later through an interpreter.
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