An Asiatic Black Bear

Oct. 17, 2003 — A hungry, 100-kilogram (220-pound) wild bear wandered into a hospital in northern Japan, terrifying a patient, and then crashed through a glass emergency exit in panic, only to return later, an official said Thursday.

"A male patient at the hospital was in the lobby's smoking section for his morning cigarette. He saw the bear and screamed for help and yelled, 'Bear! Bear!'" said Keiichi Suzuki, an official in the government of Ichinoseki City, 370 kilometers (230 miles) north of Tokyo.

The adult Asiatic black bear ambled in through the main entrance of the city's Iwai Hospital around dawn Wednesday. It walked through the automatic sliding door of the building and came into the lobby of the hospital.

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The patient's scream startled the bear, which then slipped on the polished floor, got up and stormed out of the hospital building by breaking through a glass and metal emergency exit, the official said.

"For some reason, the bear returned to the main entrance, came back to the lobby and rushed out again from the emergency exit," Suzuki said.

"Experts have told us that the bear might have smelled food, maybe honey, from the hospital. Because of the cold summer, maybe the bear had had a tough time finding enough food before the winter.

"No one was injured in the incident," he said.

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 black bears live in Japan, usually far from human settlements in the forested mountains that account for 70 percent of Japan's land mass.

However, studies have noted more bears appearing in residential areas since the 1980's as logging has reduced their habitat.