Case description
A first-person account published in the September 1976 MUFON UFO Journal places this incident in July 1973. Its witness, a twenty-year-old student working as a night watchman at a Tomakomai lumberyard, was identified as Junichi Takanashi; later retellings use a pseudonym such as Masaaki Kudou. Around 1:30 a.m., after making his rounds, he was in his car when a moving light stopped, disappeared, reappeared and changed apparent size. It then spiralled down near the bay, with green rays reported during its descent.
He described a smooth luminous sphere lowering a glass-like tube about twenty metres into the water. Its lower end shone, and a cicada-like sound changed pitch. After briefly looking away, he saw that the tube had withdrawn. The sphere then approached his car. Windows became visible, with one central shadow and two smaller shadowy forms toward the right. No clear facial anatomy was reported, so the occupants cannot responsibly be assigned a familiar alien type.
The witness said that he felt unable to move and experienced a headache while the object was close. His radio produced sounds he could not understand. He subsequently saw several other spheres and a large brown cylindrical object; the smaller objects reportedly entered the cylinder before its departure toward the north. The whole sequence was estimated at roughly twelve minutes.
Some later versions give 22 May or a different year. This entry retains July 1973 from the published first-person account rather than inventing a precise day. The tube’s appearance prompted a water-collection interpretation, but neither its actual contents nor a propulsion or paralysis mechanism was independently established.
