The most samurai convenience store clerk ever.

It’s not all that uncommon in the United States to hear stories about someone trying to rob a convenience store only to find themselves in serious trouble when the cashier pulls a gun on them. In Japan though, with it being almost impossible to own a gun, this sort of thing doesn’t happen. That’s not to say that convenience store employees in Japan don’t fight back when someone tries to rob their store. Just recently a female 7-Eleven employee used nothing but her bare hands to scare off a would-be robber. And now just this week, an expert martial artist used something else to keep a masked man from making off with his store’s money.

At about 4 a.m. on Monday (Oct. 16), a man wielding a crowbar and wearing a black hooded jacket and a ski mask walked into a Circle K convenience store in the Suruga Ward of Shizuoka City and what happened next was, for lack of a better term, bad-ass.

Upon seeing the crowbar wielding masked man enter his store the male clerk simply and very coolly asked him “Are you here for money?” The masked man responded by saying “That’s right” and told the clerk to hand it over. However, the clerk did not comply. Instead he told the masked man “I’m a black belt in kendo,” (shodan) pulled out a wooden sword he was keeping out of sight but within arm’s length and then hit the store alarm.

After this the masked man realized that he had picked the wrong store to rob and immediately fled the scene with nothing but his crowbar in hand. Neither the robber nor the samurai shop clerk were harmed.

Check out the TomoNews Japan video below to see a CG recreation of this story.

Sources: TomoNews Japan, TV Asahi

Image: 「剣道初段ですけど」コンビニ店員が木刀で強盗を撃退 (TomoNews Japan)