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The story
On August 31, Iwate Prefecture announced it had issued a reprimand to its top career official, a male planning director (60), for repeatedly stopping by undisclosed locations during working hours on business trips — including watching a high school baseball game at Koshien Stadium and visiting the Sumida Aquarium and Eihei-ji temple. The prefecture said the official covered his own travel costs, and he has explained that these were “inspections related to generating local buzz and foot traffic.” On 5channel, opinions split between those defending him by noting that personal errands during business trips are common even among private-sector employees, and those criticizing him on the grounds that public servants are held to far stricter service regulations.
8/31/2026 8:05 PM
Sankei Shimbun
On the 31st, Iwate Prefecture handed down a reprimand — a disciplinary action — to its top career official, a male planning director (60), for repeatedly sightseeing at undisclosed locations during working hours while on business trips, including watching a high school baseball game at Koshien Stadium. According to the prefecture, he covered his own travel expenses, and the planning director maintains it was “an inspection related to generating buzz and foot traffic.”
Source: sankei.com / Original article here
What people said
— because people crack down on stuff like this.
Then don't become a public servant in the first place!!
sat in meetings with a client until evening,
then went to check out a special exhibition at a museum in Shibuya before taking the shinkansen home.
Probably something like that.
A little free time on the side of a business trip
should be fine, no?
if he's someone who normally does his job properly.
You think I, a mere private citizen, could forgive a wayward public servant?
Same feeling here.
If he'd been slacking off on his actual job to the point of being a mess, or spending money in some morally outrageous way (like on sex work or ultra-luxury dinners), I'd flip my stance.
Is that allowed at your company?
I don't think there's anything wrong with doing some "inspecting" in the downtime.
Public servants have service regulations, so they're held to stricter constraints on their time than regular company employees.
In exchange, everything they do in the line of duty is backed by the state.
I'm a former public servant myself, and I did what's described in Re: #1 plenty of times — though I never showed up late to a scheduled stop on a business trip like this guy did.
The prefecture probably had no choice but to issue a reprimand once someone blew the whistle, but come on, everyone's spent their own money goofing off on a business trip at some point.
My honest take is this isn't something worth getting so worked up over, even if it happened during work hours.
This mindset that you're "losing out" unless every minute is squeezed for work is really not a good one.
There might've been some new discovery in it too, you know.
Googled it — seems like that was right after the war, lol.
I do remember Asashoryu getting absolutely reamed for playing soccer in Mongolia while skipping the summer tour over an injury, though, lol
It says right there that the travel costs were out of his own pocket.
Did he have an enemy close by?
Maybe he forgot to buy someone a souvenir?
Why would it?
Only the part that deviated from the business trip, like Koshien, was self-funded.
And on top of that, he was late.
If it was really an inspection, he should submit a report.
That report's probably just going to get written by some underling bureaucrat anyway.
Conversely, I'd think that even on a business trip, as long as it's within working hours, he should be free to do whatever wherever.
Whether it counts as an "inspection" comes down to whether it was written into the travel order in advance.
Working hours → should read "outside working hours" — otherwise the meaning flips. My bad.
Background and Key Points of This Story
Disciplinary action for Japanese local government employees comes in four levels — reprimand, pay cut, suspension, and dismissal — with a reprimand being the lightest. In this case, since the official covered his own travel costs, it wasn’t a matter of misusing public funds; rather, the issue was the act itself of repeatedly stopping by undisclosed locations during working hours, which amounts to a violation of the duty to devote full attention to one’s job. In the thread, opinions split roughly evenly between those defending him by comparing it to private-sector employees running personal errands on business trips, and those criticizing him on the grounds that public servants are held to stricter service regulations than private employees — no clear consensus emerged. Some also found it odd that the misconduct only came to light near the man’s retirement despite his long tenure, but the original article doesn’t specify how it was discovered or whether there was a whistleblower, so that point remains speculation on the thread’s part.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (News Speed+) thread “[Iwate] Watched Koshien baseball, visited Sumida Aquarium and Eihei-ji temple while on the job during a business trip — Iwate Prefecture reprimands male planning director (60), who claims it was an “inspection”“.
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