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I don’t know what it is about Japanese men and bicycle seats, but for
some reason some men can never have enough of these seats. Just a few
months after writing about a man who stole 159 bike seats in a year, we
now have the story of another Japanese man who claims to have stolen
over 5,800 seats over the lasts 25 years.
Hiroaki Suda, a 57-year-old truck driver, was arrested on Feb. 13 after
surveillance cameras caught him stealing two bicycle seats worth about
¥8,000 ($75) on Nov. 29 and 30, 2019, at a train station and a parking
lot for bicycles in Higashiosaka, Japan’s Osaka prefecture. Suda
admitted to the charges, and for some reason confessed to police that he
had started stealing bicycle seats about a quarter century before, and
had since put together quite and impressive collection.
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“I began to steal bike seats about 25 years ago in Tokyo and Osaka to
relieve stress at work and, gradually, collecting them turned out to be
fun,” Suda was quoted as saying by police.
The 57-year-old trucker led police to a storage facility that he had
rented specifically for the over 5,800 bike seats he had stolen over the
last two and a half decades. Aided by his job, which saw him traveling
all over Japan, he has stolen bike seats from every area of the country.
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The seized bike seats put on display by police make up only a fraction
of the huge collection Suda had put together.
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