Late Wednesday night in Yashio City, Saitama, a passerby spotted a vehicle fully on fire along a riverbank in the Minami-Kawasaki area and called emergency services around 11 p.m.
Firefighters put the blaze out about an hour later. What they found inside the charred light commercial van was a single body. The remains were so badly burned that police couldn’t immediately tell the person’s gender.
Authorities are now trying to identify the deceased and figure out how the fire started. That’s about as much as is publicly known so far.
Grim discoveries like this don’t usually make the tourist brochures, but they do happen. If more details emerge about who the person was or what led to the fire, they’ll likely come out through the usual police updates.