Akita Prefecture just demoted one of its own after a public servant decided the best place to hop on a work video call was a love hotel.
Takahiro Ono, a manager in his fifties working in the Department of Industry and Labor, joined an online press conference on August 6 about the prefecture’s big push to attract AI data centers. He told everyone he was calling in from home. The camera told a different story.
There he was, rocking a bathrobe and casually smoking a cigarette mid-call. Internet sleuths wasted no time. They zeroed in on the very specific wallpaper behind him and quickly pinned the location: Room 2020 at Dolphin Image, a love hotel. Even better (or worse), a reflection of a woman who was clearly not his wife made a brief appearance in the shot.
Ono eventually admitted everything. The prefecture got hit with a wave of complaints from the public and responded by suspending him for six months and demoting him from director down to chief staff officer. Officially, the punishment is for showing up to a work call in inappropriate attire and setting. The mistress part is just the extra spicy detail everyone noticed.
The guy was literally multitasking between government business and a private rendezvous. If this is what the AI era looks like in Akita, at least it’s entertaining.
