Recently, I published a post sharing some of my hotel habits, including checking under the bed and in closets as soon as I arrive in a hotel room. It’s probably not totally rational, but for whatever reason, it makes me feel better.
In the comments section of that post, someone mentioned how that reminded them of the story of the woman who noticed a bad smell in her Tokyo hotel room, only to discover a man under her bed. WHAT?!?! I hadn’t heard this story, so of course I had to investigate, and it’s easily one of the creepiest hotel stories I’ve ever heard.
In this post:
Woman discovers man under bed in Tokyo hotel room
In July 2025, The Guardian ran a story about an incident that happened in March 2025, at a hotel in Tokyo, involving a Ukrainian model who lived in Thailand. More specifically, this happened at the APA Hotel & Resort Ryogoku Eki Tower.
At around 7:30PM, the woman returned to her hotel room after going out for ramen. She changed clothes, put on a sweatshirt, got into bed, and started researching train times. However, she began to feel uneasy and noticed a strange odor, describing it as smelling like “a dead animal covered in sugar.” Then this happened:
“I decided to check under the bed, even joking to myself that there had better not be someone there. Sprawled on the bed, I craned my neck down to check. Two dark, wide eyes were staring back at me, blinking in the darkness.”
“The intruder climbed out from under the bed, blocking me from running to the door. He was sweating, which I presume was causing the smell. I started screaming and my brain kept repeating, ‘This is not real,’ over and over. I began to hyperventilate and froze on the spot, unsure whether he was about to jump on me, choke me or even try to kill me.”
“There was no space for me to run, and my body felt as if it would collapse in fear. If he tried to overpower me, I would lose. I remained rooted to the spot, shouting for help as loudly as I could. He locked eyes with me and also began screaming. I scanned his face, trying to memorise exactly what he looked like: east Asian, between 20 and 30, slightly overweight, a bowl haircut and black clothes. He ran for the door and disappeared down the corridor.”
The woman kept screaming, and a short time later, other guests were at her door to help, followed by the concierge and police.
This is honestly perhaps the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard happen at a hotel, that doesn’t involve someone dying. What an absolute nightmare.
The police were sort of dismissive about the incident
Police showed up only a short while after the incident happened. While searching the room, they found a USB cable and power bank, leading the woman to believe that the intruder had intended to secretly record her.
The police took the woman’s passport details and email, but warned that they probably wouldn’t find the man, due to lack of cameras in the hotel. They didn’t even ask for a description of the man, and she was shocked at how casually they treated the incident.
As you’d expect, she still has a lot of questions about the incident, and it has caused long term issues for her:
“I had so many questions: how did he get in? Did he know that I would be alone? I couldn’t bring myself to stay at the same place that night, so I booked a different hotel. I had never felt so isolated and scared. When I got to my new room, I asked the staff to stay with me while I searched it. I didn’t sleep because I was still very afraid, and spent the entire night ringing friends and family. I eventually returned to my home in Thailand struggling with anxiety and PTSD.”
Japan is known for being an incredibly safe country, so if you were to be concerned about an intruder in your hotel room, it’s probably not the place you’d expect something like this to happen.
One can’t help but wonder if this really couldn’t be investigated further, or if the hotel and/or police tried to downplay this to avoid the bad publicity? I mean, the hotel really doesn’t have any cameras anywhere that could’ve potentially provided assistance in an investigation, especially given that she knew what the guy looked like?
Also, how did the guy got into the hotel room, how long had he been under the bed, etc.? Admittedly I’m no female Ukrainian model, but this story reinforces my quirky practice of checking underneath hotel beds…
Bottom line
A woman staying in a Tokyo hotel noticed a strange smell in her room, and then checked under the bed, only to find a man with a USB cable and power bank hiding there. He ran out of the room, and while police showed up quickly, they didn’t do a whole lot to help, and didn’t even take a description of the man. What a terrifying incident, and I can totally see how this could cause nightmares for a very long time…
What do you make of this awful Tokyo hotel room incident?
Glad outcome was safe for her. I always check bathrooms and cupboards and use security locks at night. When travelling in far east Asia, I always check slippers etc for snakes and scorpions etc — call me paranoid but I’d rather be safe. And I always flush the toilet to check no creature is hiding within the rim.
That's a terrifying experience. Per the comments though it seems like it actually is still under investigation? Japan is a very low crime place, but catching creeprs like this early can help keep them from escalating to more serious crimes. And it absolutely blows my mind that a chain hotel, even a basic cheapo brand in Japan, doesn't have hallway or elevator lobby security cameras. As cheap as cameras and storage are these days, that's...
That's a terrifying experience. Per the comments though it seems like it actually is still under investigation? Japan is a very low crime place, but catching creeprs like this early can help keep them from escalating to more serious crimes. And it absolutely blows my mind that a chain hotel, even a basic cheapo brand in Japan, doesn't have hallway or elevator lobby security cameras. As cheap as cameras and storage are these days, that's an inexplicable business decision.
Sometimes I find that places that can well afford cameras and do not have them are making a deliberate choice.
@No cameras eh?
If you mean they're doing it for the salarymen having flings/calling delivery, that makes some sense. Though Tokyo especially also has a thriving love hotel industry for exactly that purpose.
@Dusty - true, and there's always room for innovation in any marketplace
Honestly pervert crimes like these are pretty common in Japan. The crime rates just look low because the police commission usually refuses to go after cases they aren’t confident they’ll win in court. A lot of women in the past has said the police will refuse to even write up a report for them if it’s cases like these, where it’d be really hard to locate the perp and have good enough evidence.
@Ktray - You're absolutely right. Unless it's a slam dunk case, it's common for the police to dismiss women who complain of chikan/tōsatsu. Prosecutors there have a high conviction rate because they only charge when they're sure they'll win. The police response in this hotel case is textbook - they found evidence, the woman could describe the guy, but immediately said "we probably won't find him" while seeming to show minimal effort. Japan is genuinely...
@Ktray - You're absolutely right. Unless it's a slam dunk case, it's common for the police to dismiss women who complain of chikan/tōsatsu. Prosecutors there have a high conviction rate because they only charge when they're sure they'll win. The police response in this hotel case is textbook - they found evidence, the woman could describe the guy, but immediately said "we probably won't find him" while seeming to show minimal effort. Japan is genuinely safe from violent crime but there's this weird cultural blind spot where voyeurism and groping get treated like annoying but inevitable facts of life rather than serious crimes that deserve real investigation.
I can understand not prosecuting chikan because it typically occurs in crowded places (for obvious reasons) where it's very difficult to actually prove it happened. Both because it's hard to tell WHO did it to begin with, and because the people adjacent likely couldn't see it occur. Except in egregious cases it can be passed off as an accident as well.
That's very different from the what happened here, where a dude was already in...
I can understand not prosecuting chikan because it typically occurs in crowded places (for obvious reasons) where it's very difficult to actually prove it happened. Both because it's hard to tell WHO did it to begin with, and because the people adjacent likely couldn't see it occur. Except in egregious cases it can be passed off as an accident as well.
That's very different from the what happened here, where a dude was already in the woman's room and hiding under the bed, and even left behind personal property. I know that Japanese police really only go after slam dunk cases, but it seems like it shouldn't take much effort with what they have to nail this perp.
As an airline captain, I can tell you this has happened plenty of times to the point, the airlines have developed protocols for crew safety at hotels.
Hotel staff are aware what rooms flight crews stay in. I always made sure my crew did a safety sweeps of their room prior to closing and locking their doors.
Once we even found the security peek hole in the door had been reversed so that you could see inside the room from the hallway.
Pathetic!
Are there cities or countries that are more problematic in this area?
This is your first crap article in several days Ben. Yes, it's your blog and you can write whatever you'd like, but you have a lot of loyal long-time readers that don't want the clickbait
Couldn't disagree more. This article demonstrates that Ben is reading the comments on his posts and engaging with the material that his commenters reference. It is relevant to the subject matter of the blog, and uses an outlier scenario to remind us to keep our situational awareness up when we travel.
So don’t click on it then….
I really enjoyed it. If you didn't, move on. You don't HAVE to read every article he writes. But I do appreciate you commenting so when he does the yearly review this one moves up the list for engagement!
Yeah, I agree. They should definitely get into the top. Sadly, it has not referenced most of the following topics that seem to light up the commentariat:
Israel / Palestine
Russia / Ukraine
China / Taiwan
Gaza
BRICS vs West
NATO
Military aid debates
Sanctions & economic warfare
Global South vs Western imperialism
"Decolonization" rhetoric
Donald Trump
MAGA
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Yeah, I agree. They should definitely get into the top. Sadly, it has not referenced most of the following topics that seem to light up the commentariat:
Israel / Palestine
Russia / Ukraine
China / Taiwan
Gaza
BRICS vs West
NATO
Military aid debates
Sanctions & economic warfare
Global South vs Western imperialism
"Decolonization" rhetoric
Donald Trump
MAGA
Joe Biden
Kamala Harris
Hillary Clinton
Ron DeSantis
RFK Jr.
Vivek Ramaswamy
AOC
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Bernie Sanders
Gavin Newsom
“Dark Brandon” meme
January 6 / Capitol Riots
Hunter Biden laptop
Supreme Court decisions
Roe v. Wade / abortion
Woke / Anti-woke
DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion)
CRT (Critical Race Theory)
Gender identity / Trans debates
Drag queens in schools
Pronouns / Misgendering
Book bans
Parental rights
Cancel culture
Free speech
Safe spaces
Climate change denial vs activism
AI ethics and automation fears
Election fraud / “Stop the Steal”
Gun rights / mass shootings
Police brutality / defund the police
Reparations
Joe Rogan
Jordan Peterson
Andrew Tate
Ben Shapiro
Matt Walsh
Tucker Carlson
Candace Owens
Russell Brand
Lex Fridman
Hasan Piker
Destiny
Vaush
Ethan Klein (H3)
MrBeast (when involved in drama)
Sneako
IShowSpeed
Logan Paul / Jake Paul
Elon Musk
Mark Zuckerberg
Jeff Bezos
Sam Altman / OpenAI
AI doomerism
Neuralink / SpaceX
Threads vs X (formerly Twitter)
Billionaire tax
Crypto bros
NFT collapses
World Economic Forum (WEF) / Davos
Andrew Tate
The Red Pill
Nick Fuentes
Alpha male discourse
Female hypergamy / dating economy
Passport bros
Incels
MGTOW
OnlyFans
“High-value men”
Women with high body counts
“Feminism ruined everything” takes
Groomers
Pedophilia accusations
Satanic panic / Balenciaga scandal
Soros
Big Pharma
Vaccines / Anti-vax
COVID origins
15-minute cities
Social credit scores
Surveillance state
Digital ID
Epstein / Maxwell
Flat Earth / conspiracy rabbit holes
QAnon
The Matrix (as red pill metaphor)
Thx Luck for the post. I will now check my hotel room initially as well as every time I get back to the room. Great travel safety practices!
Maybe I am staying too much at hotels in the US and Europe but I don't remember last time I stayed at a hotel that had a bed that someone could get under. Most of the hotels have box beds that have no space underneath so I personally never felt the need to check under the bed as there is nothing there to check.
They are less common, but they do exist. And you do check under the bed, especially if you had a formative experience as a child where you went on holiday with your cousins and one of them got an extra keycard to your room and snuck in after dinner and waited until you were about to go to sleep and sat on the edge of the bed and then suddenly grabbed your ankles and has continued to mock you for your reaction in the ten following years.
this took place at the APA Hotel chain which is known for having some of the smallest rooms excluding capsule hotels. There's likely nowhere to put a suitcase other than under the bed.
The APA chain has very small room. So they have designed that the under the bed space is the only place to put your luggage, so the bed is slightly higher than usual
Jeez I am becoming incredibly sceptical but as soon as I read terms like 'Ukranian model living in Thailand' or 'influencer with 600k followers living in Morrocco'.or 'man who once feature on Big Brother (enter other reality TV show)' my doubts are already setting in with these crazy stories.
It is incredible what a lot of people will do to or say to raise their profile.
OK the hotel may have lacked cameras but surely...
Jeez I am becoming incredibly sceptical but as soon as I read terms like 'Ukranian model living in Thailand' or 'influencer with 600k followers living in Morrocco'.or 'man who once feature on Big Brother (enter other reality TV show)' my doubts are already setting in with these crazy stories.
It is incredible what a lot of people will do to or say to raise their profile.
OK the hotel may have lacked cameras but surely there are a couple, like at the entrance. He must have gained access to the room with a key, did the police interview the hotel staff? DNA??
To much that does not add up.
Natali Khomenko's story appears credible. She's a creative producer living in Thailand. Multiple international outlets covered the story, including Taiwan's Mirror Media and South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo. This APA Hotel officially acknowledged the incident to J-CAST News, stating "The matter is under investigation by authorities, and we cannot comment further."
The details check out: APA Hotels do have under-bed luggage storage space as a standard feature, police found physical evidence (power bank and USB cable),...
Natali Khomenko's story appears credible. She's a creative producer living in Thailand. Multiple international outlets covered the story, including Taiwan's Mirror Media and South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo. This APA Hotel officially acknowledged the incident to J-CAST News, stating "The matter is under investigation by authorities, and we cannot comment further."
The details check out: APA Hotels do have under-bed luggage storage space as a standard feature, police found physical evidence (power bank and USB cable), and the hotel provided a full refund while refusing her $1,600 compensation request. She contacted the Ukrainian embassy and waited a month before going public - consistent with trauma recovery, not attention-seeking. No contradictory evidence has emerged from police, hotel, or Japanese media sources despite the story being widely covered.
The timeline is consistent (March 29 check-in, April 25 TikTok post), her background is verifiable, and the hotel's official response confirms something serious enough happened to warrant an ongoing police investigation. While the story is disturbing, the evidence strongly supports that it occurred as she described.
Did we ask Grok?
This weekend I was staying at a brand new homewood suites. I arrived late at night with my wife and had checked in on my phone so we could go right up. She doesn’t have the app so the next day I figured I’d grab a physical card key for her. I grabbed my wallet and headed down. I asked the front desk for a key for the room and she made a key card...
This weekend I was staying at a brand new homewood suites. I arrived late at night with my wife and had checked in on my phone so we could go right up. She doesn’t have the app so the next day I figured I’d grab a physical card key for her. I grabbed my wallet and headed down. I asked the front desk for a key for the room and she made a key card and handed it over. She never asked for my ID let alone even asked what my name was. I was shocked! I could have given her any random room number I wanted whether I was actually a guest or not. It freaked my wife out to no end. She even said “some guy could have come in here and hid in the closet or under the bed”. Not sure if it was because it was new they weren’t super well trained or because it was a small town in MI and everyone is nice… but some additional training needs to happen there!
"Japan is known for being an incredibly safe country"
Another successful propaganda.
"The police were sort of dismissive about the incident"
Exactly why the country is overrated as very safe and Japan's criminal conviction rate is over 99%.
The cases that would go cold are completely ignored.
Reading this article as I’m sitting on a bed in a hotel in Tokyo…thankfully this bed has nowhere for anyone to hide.
And your room is so tiny, there is no where to sit but on the bed.
…. are you in that hotel too Eskimo?
My word you do get around bro! …. :-)
I remember this case. A guy slept in a room for three days with a dead body under his mattress.
https://www.deseret.com/2003/7/15/19735325/body-found-under-bed-after-guest-complains/?
"dead animal covered in sugar"
Worst. Cocktail. Name. Ever.
There is an outdoor food truck court… lawn... thingy… in Whitefish, MT that sells a cocktail called the “Expired Bear Spray.” I wonder if it is effective against dead animals covered in sugar. :(
Eskimo, was that you bro?
You have been very quiet of late, not posting with a different name I hope! …. :-)
Quiet? Eskimo?
Nice to finally know where Trump was while missing for several days.
Thanks in advance to everyone who has a normal reaction to this comment.
When stupid idiots were created you were first in line.
Curious that this Roppongi hotel and neighborhood was without cameras with security so lacking. No fingerprints on anything? Hmm. Perhaps there was a communication issue.
This hotel is nowhere near Roppongi.
Ah. You are correct. There is one in Roppongi but apparently not this one. Thanks for the correction.
Thoughts and prayers???
Maybe it's not a bad practice to check under the bed. But a lot of places have beds without any space under it.
Yes mostly platform style frames. I thought they used those so guests would not leave shoes and stuff behind.
There would certainly be DNA on the items he left behind which they can test. Wouldn't there also be CCTV in the elevators and lobby? Not to mention a ton of cameras at street level around the hotel. If this guy is taking extreme measures such as this, the least the police could do is secure camera footage from around the hotel and test for DNA - for all we know he's a serial rapist or worse and he's just off on the streets left to repeat this again.
You're absolutely right that more investigation should be done. The concerning part is that the hotel told her they had no security cameras and police said they "probably wouldn't find him due to lack of cameras in the hotel." This seems like inadequate investigation for exactly the reasons you mention - DNA testing and checking surrounding street cameras should be standard.
The police's casual response actually supports her story's credibility though. If she were lying,...
You're absolutely right that more investigation should be done. The concerning part is that the hotel told her they had no security cameras and police said they "probably wouldn't find him due to lack of cameras in the hotel." This seems like inadequate investigation for exactly the reasons you mention - DNA testing and checking surrounding street cameras should be standard.
The police's casual response actually supports her story's credibility though. If she were lying, they'd likely have found contradictory evidence during their investigation. Instead, the hotel confirmed to media that authorities are still investigating, suggesting they found her account credible enough to pursue.
Bizarre situation and I'm sure she's being truthful. But what if she is lying? Besides the items under the bed, which could have been hers, what evidence is there?
It's fine to be skeptical, but the evidence here is actually pretty strong. APA Hotel officially acknowledged the incident to J-CAST, stating "The matter is under investigation by authorities" - they could have simply denied it if fabricated. Police were called, physical evidence was found, and she got a full hotel refund. She also contacted the Ukrainian embassy and waited a month before going public (trauma recovery, not attention-seeking behavior).
Multiple international outlets covered it....
It's fine to be skeptical, but the evidence here is actually pretty strong. APA Hotel officially acknowledged the incident to J-CAST, stating "The matter is under investigation by authorities" - they could have simply denied it if fabricated. Police were called, physical evidence was found, and she got a full hotel refund. She also contacted the Ukrainian embassy and waited a month before going public (trauma recovery, not attention-seeking behavior).
Multiple international outlets covered it. No contradictory evidence has emerged from police, hotel, or Japanese sources despite widespread coverage.
@Django I read the entire J-Cast article and the hotels statement. They acknowledged an incident. They did not acknowledge a man was in the room, nor was he caught anywhere on their security cameras, nor did they say the items found in the room belonged to someone besides the women.
very bad situation
also sorry for her situation with polish lot