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The story
On the 13th, the city of Chofu in Tokyo announced it had issued a formal reprimand to a section chief in his 50s from the Environment Department, after a fire broke out while he left his desk with a mobile battery charging unattended. The city said that since late last year it had been warning staff not to leave the office or their desks while batteries were charging. On 5ch, criticism that “you shouldn’t charge personal devices on the taxpayer’s dime” collided with pushback noting “the city never banned charging itself,” sparking debate over the gray zone of personal device use by public servants and whether the punishment fit the offense.
Mobile Battery Catches Fire While Charging, Unattended — Tokyo’s Chofu City Disciplines Official: Asahi Shimbun
October 13, 2026, 6:00 PM — Ari Hirayama
Chofu City in Tokyo announced on the 13th that it had issued a formal reprimand, effective the 9th, to a male section chief in his 50s from the Environment Department, after a fire broke out while he left a mobile battery charging at his desk and stepped away. The city said that at the end of last year it had warned staff not to leave the office or their desks while batteries were charging.
Source: asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
Cut him some slack.
Don't be so nitpicky.
That much should be fine.
Have you really never used the office copier for personal stuff?
Isn't it his own property since it's a personal mobile battery?
Using the office outlet, though, that's stealing electricity.
Don't charge your stuff with hard-earned tax money in the first place, you thief.
A phone itself, maybe, but charge your mobile battery at home.
This is exactly why public servants get bashed, yet the real problem is they can't even grasp why.
Maybe they should just charge mobile batteries in the mayor's office?
The rule is no charging a mobile battery while away from your seat.
Has nothing to do with the toilet.
If it's for work use, the office should be the one supplying it — then charging it at work wouldn't be a problem.
Staff quietly using their personal phones for work keeps costs down in practice,
but if you try to enforce the rules to the letter, nobody benefits and the burden just keeps piling up.
At a private company nobody would normally care.
Though some nitpicky places do.
A personal phone's battery shouldn't drain that fast, right?
Does he even need a mobile battery?
Internet access is banned, so you either memorize Excel functions by heart or look them up on your personal phone and tap away.
I've run my own personal site for over ten years now.
When I started, I used to get visits from company domains and government domains,
but now there's almost none.
Things really have changed lol
A bureaucrat I know was struggling with handling inquiries about the office's YouTube PR channel —
he gets yelled at because he can't access YouTube from his work computer,
but if he checks YouTube on his personal phone, he gets yelled at for "personal use."
my phone battery barely drained at all; if anything I had trouble even reaching my family.
Poor signal should actually drain the battery faster, though.
If it might explode, whether he was away from his desk isn't the point.
Don't let personal batteries be charged there at all.
Honestly I think the mobile battery itself is at fault and the owner is a victim here. Unless he was using it in some unusual way, that's on the manufacturer/seller.
That said, this office apparently had already banned it beforehand, so the employee does bear some responsibility too.
We don't actually know why it exploded.
Those handheld fan explosions that were in the news a while back
turned out to be from using ones that got dropped and deformed.
And if a guy's dumb enough to keep charging it even when it's banned, you can guess how carefully he's handling it.
> The city says it does not prohibit employees from charging mobile batteries
Guess it's fine, then.
The newer lithium iron phosphate batteries are supposedly "absolutely safe," but I've never seen anyone else using them.
Can't be helped, idiots underestimate fire risk.
If you think about it normally, replacing it is the obvious choice.
Wait, is lithium iron phosphate actually a standardized spec now?
I'm a Chofu resident, and I actually got a semi-solid-state mobile battery through furusato nozei (hometown tax donation rewards).
Feels like an unintentional dig at the city now.
Isn't a personally-owned mobile battery just unnecessary for office work?
If the office had issued it, you couldn't complain, but…
Things like looking up how to read a kanji, or using it as a calculator — I'd think that happens regardless of it being a government office.
And honestly, it's pretty ugly watching unrelated outsiders nitpick how someone else does their job.
No idea what an Environment Department section chief's job actually involves, but if he's out in the field a lot and brought his own because of that, well, I guess that's understandable.
Just speculating though.
That mark's just slapped on by whoever, anyway.
LOL you "picked up" a donabe pot?
If I flush my own personal poop with the city's water, do I get scolded because the poop isn't city property? What's the difference between electricity and water here?
I'm not the one getting mad, so go ask whoever is.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Mobile battery fires are often triggered by internal lithium-ion battery degradation or deformation from being dropped, and there have been incidents even with PSE-certified products (Japan’s official electrical-safety mark). In its warning issued at the end of last year, Chofu City did not ban charging itself — it only banned leaving the office or one’s desk while a battery was charging. This nuance was pointed out later in the thread with comments noting “it’s not a charging ban,” a detail easy to miss from the headline alone. Opinions in the thread split between criticism of using city electricity to charge personal devices, and a more permissive view that takes into account how commonly phones are used at work for quick lookups or as calculators. A reprimand is the lightest category of disciplinary action for local government employees, and the fact that the fire itself resulted from negligence rather than intent likely factored into the leniency of the punishment.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “Mobile Battery Catches Fire While Charging, Unattended — Tokyo’s Chofu City Disciplines Official.”
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