My, they’re getting awfully choosy these days:
TOKYO (Reuters) – A Japanese man pulled a knife in a convenience store early Sunday morning and threatened to kill himself unless he was given a meal of the choicest sushi.
The 68-year-old unemployed man barged into the store in the western city of Osaka after first setting fire to his nearby apartment, police said Monday. Newspapers said the man claimed he couldn’t eat because his state benefit payments had been stopped.
Police overpowered the man after about an hour, during which time he ate bananas and helped himself to alcoholic drinks and vitamin supplements. Police declined to say whether he got any sushi.
What next? A string of tofu robberies?
I ran into a situation like this in San Diego a few weeks ago when I went into a Subway sandwich shop and a scruffy looking man approached me and said: “Hey sir…Could you give me a couple of dollars for a meatball sandwich?”
Now you’re not just supposed to worry about people who are starving, but people that are starving for certain foods…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.