‘We searched the house … checking everywhere someone could possibly hide,’ Itakura said. ‘When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side.’
The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man’s house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.
The closet is part of a Japanese-style room, one of several rooms in his one-story house where the man lived alone – or so he had thought.
Police were investigating how she managed to go in and out of the house unnoticed, as well as details of her life inside the closet, and if she had taken anything else besides food.
She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and apparently even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman ‘neat and clean.