Rescue team save ‘drowning woman’ from harbour - only to discover it was a sex doll

Japanese authorities embarked on a heroic rescue mission to recover a “drowning woman” from a local harbour. However, upon arrival to the city of Hachinohe’s port, the squad soon realized their damsel in distress wasn’t breathing — but not because she had died.

The alleged casualty turned out to be an especially convincing inanimate object. Yep, the retrieval team had been called in to salvage none other than a sex doll.

Per 2ch, the incident occurred on June 18, when Japanese YouTuber Natsuki Tanaka spotted the “body” while filming fishing footage. Initially confusing the doll for a “corpse,” she found humor in the misunderstanding and took to Twitter to document the occurrence.

“While I was shooting a fishing video, I thought that a human corpse was flowing and it was a sex doll,” Natsuki tweeted, originally in Japanese and translated by Google.

From there, however, chaos ensued. A good samaritan passerby misconstrued the circumstances, alerting local authorities, prompting the police and fire departments — and an ambulance — to arrive at the otherwise peaceful Hachinohe port, ready to rescue a woman in need of aide.

Per Natsuki’s photos, featured above, multiple fire trucks and emergency vehicles were present on site while at least one individual dove into the water to recover the “woman.” Multiple onlookers gathered to watch what they seemed to believe was a legitimate — or at least human — rescue mission, in awe.

Twitter user @PowerSportsVoW was a part of the crowd, and captured the spectacle in action via Twitter. “Off Hachinohe,” they wrote alongside an image of the doll being pulled from the water. “iIllegal dumping of oversized garbage,” they wrote, likely a nod to Japan’s highly regulated, and thus complicated, garbage disposal system.

“Thank you for your hard work,” they concluded with a police officer emoji. (Again, in Japanese, yet translated by Google.)

Per Kotaku, this is not the first time a suspiciously placed sex doll has been confused for a corpse (and likely won’t be the last). In 2018, a sex doll was mistaken for a “body” in Colerian Township, Ohio. In their defense, the doll was wrapped in a garbage bag and abandoned on a hillside, which essentially screams “serial killer disposal” to us as avid Criminal Minds viewers. Local news reported the incident, referring to the doll as a “recreational mannequin.”