{"id":186851,"date":"2025-10-09T01:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/186851\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T01:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T01:23:11","slug":"bear-enters-japanese-supermarket-pounces-on-customer-as-nationwide-toll-reaches-new-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/186851\/","title":{"rendered":"Bear enters Japanese supermarket, pounces on customer, as nationwide toll reaches new high"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A bear rampaged through the sushi section of a supermarket in central Japan Tuesday, the latest in a series of attacks that have pushed this year\u2019s death toll to a record high.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Two customers, ages 69 and 76, were injured when the bear, standing at 1.4 meters, crossed a parking lot before entering a supermarket in Numata City, about 80 miles north of Tokyo, according to local police. One was injured in the parking lot, the other inside the store.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Though this encounter wasn\u2019t fatal, two bear attacks earlier this month took the death toll to 7 people so far this year, according to official data and local news reports \u2013 the highest annual toll since records began in 2006.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">On Tuesday, around 40 people were doing their shopping at about 7:30 p.m. local time when the bear entered the premises and pounced on a shopper, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported. Two customers suffered minor injuries, police said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/12\/09\/asia\/bear-attacks-japan-record-climate-intl-hnk?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_yahoo\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Experts say bears;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Experts say bears<\/a> are increasingly venturing out of their traditional habitats and into urban areas in search of food because climate change is interfering with the flowering and pollination of some of the animals\u2019 traditional sources of food.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">However, the supermarket store manager told NHK the bear didn\u2019t seem interested in food.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cIt seemed like it had entered the store, wanted to leave but couldn\u2019t, and then became agitated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">As the manager tried to evacuate customers from the store, the bear ran out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cI often heard news reports about bears entering stores, but I never imagined one would actually come to ours,\u201d the manager told NHK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Earlier this month, two deaths were attributed to bear attacks, taking the annual toll to 7. Then a body with scratch marks that appeared to be from a bear was discovered Wednesday morning in the northern Iwate prefecture, NHK reported, possibly pushing the death toll higher.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Tuesday\u2019s attack was among a series of reported encounters between bears and humans across the country this week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Also on Tuesday, a farmer in his 20s was attacked by a bear in the northern prefecture of Akita, days after a Spanish tourist was wounded by another animal while walking near a shuttle bus top at the Shirakawa Village, a popular destination in central Japan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/account\/register?source=external-feeds_iluminar&amp;cid=external-feeds_iluminar_yahoo&amp;registration_email_campaign=https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/newsletters\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:CNN.com;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">CNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bear rampaged through the sushi section of a supermarket in central Japan Tuesday, the latest in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[58492,82270,386,40851,90,49128,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-186851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-bear-attacks","9":"tag-death-toll","10":"tag-japan","11":"tag-nhk","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-supermarket","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom","17":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}