Meet the Japanese trucker who was spotted on holiday in Syria by a war reporter.
Extreme tourism just got a little more, well extreme. Japanese trucker Toshifumi Fujimoto is apparently not content with the typical adventure holidays on offer and was instead found by an AFP reporter in Aleppo, Syria, taking a vacation in the warzone.
When questioned, Fujimoto was having his photos taken with rebels and said he liked the adrenaline rush of seeing conflicts up close. “It fascinates me, and I enjoy it,” he explained.
Aleppo is not the only dangerous place Fujimoto claims he has gone sightseeing in. Last year he was in Yemen during the demonstrations at the US embassy, while the year before he travelled to Cairo in the aftermath of the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. He says his dream destination is Afghanistan, to meet the Taliban.
Nor is it the first time the divorced father of three has snuck into Syria, via Turkey. He also visited the country, where the UN suggests more than 60,000 people have been killed, in 2011. His online photo albumsinclude pictures of local people, but also corpses. Asked about his family back home, he explains that he has not seen any of his children for five years, and cannot speak about them without crying.
“I pray every day that, if something happens to me, my girls might collect the insurance money and be able to live comfortably,” he said. But he didn’t worry about the danger: “I’m not a target for snipers because I’m a tourist, not like you journalists.”
The Guardian
