A 57-year-old ramen chef in northern Japan has become an unlikely national hero after fighting off a bear attack with a judo throw, then calmly returning to work despite blood streaming down his face.
The incident occurred at Tenya, a ramen workshop in Sannohe Town, Aomori Prefecture, on the morning of November 9th. The employee had arrived at 5 am to begin his daily routine of preparing ingredients behind the shop when he noticed something unusual.
“I saw a black thing moving,” he recalled. What he initially mistook for a large dog turned out to be a one-meter bear cub. Before he could react, the animal launched itself at him. “It suddenly turned toward me and attacked my face,” he told Japanese media. “I couldn’t avoid it. I was scratched near my right eye.”
The bear’s claws tore open a deep gash near his eyelid. Acting on pure instinct, the chef struck back with his left hand, but quickly realized conventional tactics weren’t working. “No matter how many times I hit it, it wouldn’t budge. My hands were really hurting,” he said. The chef later described the bear’s body as feeling like iron plates covered in thick fur, completely unlike anything human.
Facing a life-or-death situation, the chef changed his approach. He stepped in close to the animal, hooked its leg, and executed an o-soto-gari—a classic judo throw that sends opponents crashing backwards. The maneuver worked. The startled bear tumbled to the ground, scrambled to its feet, and fled into the nearby mountains.
What happened next stunned everyone who heard the story. Despite suffering significant facial injuries and bleeding profusely, the chef walked straight back inside and resumed preparing ramen. He grabbed a towel to try stanching the flow of blood from his head, but there was too much to absorb. Still, he pressed on with his work.
When the shop’s manager, Sasaki, arrived minutes later, he was confronted with an astonishing sight: his employee calmly making soup stock with blood dripping down his face. “I told him, ‘You need to go to the hospital,'” Sasaki said. The chef’s response was equally remarkable: “It’s nothing. The shop must open.”
An ambulance eventually transported him to Hachinohe Municipal Hospital, where doctors discovered the full extent of his injuries. They stitched a 10-centimeter wound near his right eye and found he had also sustained a fractured rib during the encounter. He is currently on sick leave but expected to make a full recovery.
The chef’s extraordinary dedication and quick thinking have captured the imagination of people across Japan. Remarkably, he has no formal martial arts training and previously worked in the medical field before joining the ramen shop. Since the incident went viral, his phone hasn’t stopped ringing with calls from concerned friends and family.
“My daughter called me saying, ‘Dad, I saw the news. That’s you, right?'” he recounted. “Friends contacted me too. Even the mayor came to my house to check on me.”
Reflecting on the experience, the chef offered advice that runs counter to common wisdom about bear encounters. “People say to play dead or crouch down, but you don’t have time. They can attack your face instantly,” he said. He also acknowledged the role luck played in his survival: “I was lucky it was a cub. If it were a mother bear, I’d be dead.”
