How (not) to rob a shop

If you’re going to turn to a life of crime, specifically holding up retailers for the contents of their till, I would imagine it’s useful, if not essential, to be somewhat hardened.

Work out your banter before you go in.  Think of something intimidating, something that shows your ambition, something bloodcurdling like…

Could I please have some money?

Err… Mmm. Not sure I’d be too frightened of that, to be honest. But it’s what 24-year-old Ryo Miyata tried when he “entered a convenience store in Osaka’s Kita Ward” at gone 3 in the morning last Wednesday armed with a craft knife.

The clerk, who later described the man to police as “quite timid-looking”, simply responded “You can’t go around doing things like this. Why don’t you stop it.”

Those harsh words sapped the young man’s spirit, and he put down his blade on the counter and waited with the clerk until the arrival of the police, for whom it was just the beginning of another day on the tough crime-ridden streets of Japan.