Fire at Video Store Kills 15 in Japan

[Coventina]

Source: New York Times

TOKYO — A fire believed to be arson swept through an x-rated video store in Osaka early Wednesday, killing 15 men, most as they slept in small private cubicles doubling as cheap overnight accommodations, the authorities said.

The police arrested a 46-year-old man who they said deliberately set fire to newspapers in a cubicle just before 3 a.m. The fire and smoke spread through a section of the store on the first floor of a seven-story building.

(snip)

In recent years, video stores and Internet and comic book cafes equipped with cubicles, cots and showers have become popular cheap places to stay overnight in Japanese cities, because trains stop running around midnight.

The Osaka store, called Cats, rented 32 cubicles for $15 a night. Officials said 3 employees and 26 customers were in the store at the time of the fire.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/world/asia/02japan.html?ref=asia

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What a horrible way to go!

(not that there's that many GOOD ways)

[Andrushka]

1. "sleeping"

Mmkay. Sure that's what they were doing...

[ManiacJoe]

5. Most likely.

Had they been doing something else (thus being awake), they probably would have escaped.

[pattmarty]

2. I am going to start a "small business" here in the US..............

.......building overnight 'cubicles" for all the homeless people and get myself a government loan and maybe get me some stocks.............................snoooooooooooooooooooooooze

[JonQ]

3. When will we learn

we need strict match-control laws immediately, before more tragedies like this occur. Fire serves only to destroy, and has no place in modern society.

[NickB79]

4. But they saved the hentai tentacle porn, right?