Pickup Artist Admits To Slashing Tires To Meet Women

Pop quiz: What’s the best way to pick up women? If you answered “slashing their tires and then offering to change out them out,” you are creepy. You also might be Yoshihito Harada.

Harada is accused of puncturing the tires of parked vehicles in an attempt to introduce himself to their female drivers and offer his help. At his first trial on April 16, when asked if there was any truth to the allegations, the 25-year-old plainly admitted “It’s true, I did it.”

According to the opening statement by the case’s prosecutors, Harada used a screwdriver or another sharp object to slash the tires on five different cars between April of 2011 and December 2012. The cars were usually parked outside of supermarkets in the cities of Miyoshi, Nisshin and Toyota, Aichi Prefecture.

In every case, the reason given for doing this was to pick up women.

They’d come out to their cars after shopping, and Harada would walk up saying something like “Looks like you’ve got a flat. Let me fix it for you.” While changing the flat tire, he’d strike up a friendly conversation and attempt to exchange phone numbers.

He got caught because one of his victims told a friend that she had recently met a man after he offered to change her flat tire. Her friend replied that the exact same thing had recently happened to her. Small town, I guess.

In any case, the two women reported the story to the authorities, and an investigation was immediately launched.

Harada seemed to feel pretty bad about the whole thing, with witnesses reporting that he frequently broke down in tears when in court.

His defense lawyer said that Harada had apparently pulled the trick about 1,000 times.