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Page last updated at 06:23 GMT, Friday, 30 May 2008 07:23 UK

Woman lived hidden in Japan flat

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A woman has been arrested in Japan for sneaking into a man's house and living in his wardrobe without him knowing.

Police found 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa living in a small storage space in the house in the southern city of Fukuoka.

The house belonged to a 57-year-old man, who had become suspicious after food disappeared from his fridge.

So he installed a surveillance system, which filmed the woman as she walked around in his absence.

On Wednesday afternoon police searched the house and found the woman in her cubby hole.

She had brought a mattress into the tiny space in the wardrobe, police said.

"She told police that she had nowhere to live," the French news agency AFP quoted a local police spokesman as saying.

"She seems to have lived there for about a year, but not all the time."



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