national

2 students drown after falling off pier while ‘playing sumo’

16 Comments

Two high school students drowned after they fell off a pier into the sea at Shiohama Sanbanze Ocean Park in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture, on Thursday.

According to police, the two students were part of a group of seven or eight who were hanging out in the area at around 2 p.m., Fuji TV reported. Some of the group told police that their two classmates were fooling around, pretending they were sumo wrestlers, when they got too close to the edge of the pier and toppled into the sea.

A passerby called 119 and said that two students had fallen into the sea and were drifting away. Their bodies were retrieved about 50 minutes later and they were taken to hospital, in a state of cardiac arrest but did not regain consciousness, police said.

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16 Comments
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A reason why all Japanese children should be taught to swim. Japan is surrounded by sea and full of rivers. But I guess the water must of been cold.

condolences to the families and I hope their friends get counseling

7 ( +11 / -4 )

Sad news.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

High school students that can’t swim. Shameful Japan!

2 ( +5 / -3 )

Or maybe their parents should be stricter about what they do in their free time? England is full of rivers and is surrounded by sea but most of us can't swim to save our lives, metaphorically and physically speaking.

yeah and in England school kids are out sniffing glue, robbing shops and beating up passers by......their parents don't know where they are either

7 ( +8 / -1 )

Whether they could swim or not, falling into a (possibly) rough sea with a (possibly) fast current running and an 8 degree water temperature, unless taken out quickly their chances of survival were slim at best.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Or maybe their parents should be stricter about what they do in their free time? 

What exactly were these teenagers doing that would be prevented by parents being stricter? They weren't doing anything "bad", they were just horsing around like any teenager would do and met with a terrible, tragic accident.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

This should read '2 teenagers' or '2 school pupils'.

'Student' is usually referred to as people studying at university.

Since when is student only referred to people studying at university? I'm sure many will disagree with you on that. But, this really is a tragedy. I'm glad that many schools teach swimming at a young age. However, I think extra swimming classes and swimming education would be beneficial. My condolences to the parents.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

That’s not fooling around or playing sumo but simply either the usual and widespread bullying or massive fighting about a female classmate or girlfriend. The only question is, if one of the drowned is the only attacker or both are victims of the rest of the group who are still outside the water and unharmed. No one above the age of a toddler, who absolutely cannot swim , happily goes to such a narrow dangerous place or even starts to play around in a dangerous way. You would instead try to convince all to better meet in a park or café but if there anyway at the sea you would surely take maximum care about the ground and what the others who surround you are doing.

-4 ( +0 / -4 )

The pier in question was shown on TV news this morning -- it is flat and made of concrete, perhaps 3 or 4 metres wide and did not have safety railings. As mentioned previously by JT poster Zichi, there is a tidal flats nearby which is popular for digging clams and shellfish. The name of the seaside ocean park has been spelled incorrectly in the article; Note the correct spelling is 'Sanbanze'.

Moderator: Thank you for spotting the typo.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

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