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The story
A story shared on 5ch’s News Speed+ board describes a passenger who found a parent and child sitting in the reserved window seat they’d booked a month in advance on a limited express train. When the passenger spoke up, the father reportedly shot back, “I’ve got a kid, you know. Couldn’t you sit somewhere else?” But rather than debate the rights and wrongs of the situation, the thread quickly settled into a familiar refrain — “not this kind of story again” — with most of the discussion revolving around whether the tale was real or made up. Some pointed to a note attached to the original article as evidence that it’s actually an edited, reconstructed reader-survey submission rather than a straight account of real events.
I’d booked a reserved window seat on a limited express a month in advance, planning to go visit my mother back home.
I checked my boarding spot on the platform, then wheeled my suitcase onto the train.
Following the seat number down the aisle, I found a boy of about three sitting in my reserved window seat.
Source: news.jp / Original article here
What people said
Tons of similar short videos going around too.
I'm sick of it.
It genuinely pisses me off — I keep hitting "not interested" on those shorts and obvious made-up karma-payback stories, but they always crawl back eventually.
I don't even watch that genre, so it must be getting recommended off the back of some totally different video.
hardly anyone actually has a sharp comeback ready for when it happens to them in real life.
Just say, sounding annoyed, "Um, this is actually my seat…" and leave it at that.
When there's a transportation accident, they identify bodies by the seat you booked, right?
So I'd say something like: "I just want my family to be able to claim my body even a little sooner, so I really can't give up this seat" —
and just keep pleading earnestly, on and on. I figure they'd decide I'm too much trouble and back off.
Sitting in the wrong seat by accident and both people realizing when they check tickets — sure, that happens sometimes.
But the price gap between a non-reserved and a reserved ticket is only a few hundred yen, so nobody's pulling a stunt like this.
It's not just about saving a few hundred yen — if all the reserved seats are sold out, a non-reserved ticket is the only option you can buy.
I ride the Shinkansen three times a week too, and I've never seen trouble like this.
Though I do often see people boarding a Nozomi with a cheaper Kodama ticket (a slower train's ticket used to sneak onto the faster one).
I make a point of lining up on the reserved-car side, right at the boundary between the reserved and non-reserved cars.
Naturally, people with reserved seats don't need to rush, so that line is practically empty.
The instant the doors open I board, then immediately dash into the non-reserved car — makes it easy to grab a seat. Recommended.
you can't actually know whether it is or not.
You might not believe it, but it's all a fabrication generated by AI.
In that kind of situation every reserved seat is already full, so you'd obviously know that a non-reserved ticket means you're guaranteed to get bumped.
That's exactly why it's a made-up story.
Apparently in China even reserved seats work first-come-first-served, so maybe this guy's from over there.
"No. Not. Happening."
That one line settles it — what's even the issue?
If they refuse to move, you just call the conductor.
"Lord Dio!" (a riff on the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure villain's catchphrase "muda da" — "it's useless" — which sounds like "dame da," the "No" from the post above)
That's exactly why it ends up that way.
There's no "commissioning" about it — that's clearly an AI-generated illustration.
Probably the article text too…
With an AI illustration, it probably cost next to nothing. Which means the original article might be AI-written too, lol
Behold, this thread's own "Three Great Views"… (riffing on Japan's famous "Three Great Views" scenic-spot ranking, jokingly applied to lump together these dramatic comeback lines)
Something like: "Had I been a true professional passenger, I should have heard the sound of the wind, felt its very breath — and I reflected on having neglected to do so."
Enough with the made-up stories already.
>
"Excuse me, but I also have this seat reserved…"
I answered while showing my ticket, and this time the father turned to face me.
"I've got a kid, you know. Couldn't you sit somewhere else?"
His tone was a bit sharper than before.
This guy sounds like the type who'd instantly turn tail if it were some big tattooed guy instead.
Punchline: turns out the family squatting there didn't even have a reserved-seat ticket.
Same exact story's come up before.
I bet people like this really exist —
the type who just muscle their way through life like that.
His tone was a bit sharper than before.
So dumb. And apparently the family only had non-reserved tickets. Utterly pointless.
If this is really true, then he's a deliberate offender using his own kid as leverage.
"Couldn't you sit somewhere else" doesn't even make grammatical sense there —
it's a reserved seat, for crying out loud.
Background and points of debate
This type of “reader experience column” — built around trouble on trains or in restaurants — gets published regularly on news sites, and it becomes a talking point on 5ch every single time. This case was no different: a note attached to the original article, quoted in the thread, states that the piece is “based on experiences submitted through a reader survey, with people, situations, and dialogue partially edited and reconstructed out of consideration for privacy.” In other words, the article itself makes clear it isn’t a verbatim account of a real incident but a reader submission reworked into a narrative piece. Readers who miss that caveat tend to get stuck arguing over whether the story is “real,” even though the article already flags itself as a creative reconstruction — a detail that’s easy to overlook. At the same time, some in the thread raised concrete, rail-savvy points, like the price gap between reserved and non-reserved tickets, or how during busy periods only non-reserved tickets may be available, showing a genuine effort to check the story’s details against real-world train travel.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “👧”I’ve Got a Kid, You Know. Can’t You Just Sit Somewhere Else?” — Family Caught Squatting in Stranger’s Reserved Window Seat.”
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