The best friend of the American student who has been labelled as missing in Japan has revealed their last text conversation together as the search continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
James Higginbotham, known by his peers as \u2018Weston\u2019, is a 20-year-old who went missing,\u00a0after a May meeting with his best friend, Japanese native Hiyu Shikari, who is also 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During this trip, Weston and Nancy visited Hiyu, who was a middle school friend of Weston\u2019s in the US prior to him moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The family met Hiyu in Tokyo, with the students taking a picture together at the reunion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, it was after this date that Hiyu said something happened that left him feeling \u2018worried\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He told. \u201cWe had such a great time at a restaurant in Shinjuku, which is in Tokyo. Right after that, I tried to contact him on how he was doing in Kyoto, because I was in Kyoto a couple of weeks ago, and also the typhoon was coming as I was kind of worried, and I messaged him, \u2018How\u2019s the trip going?\u2019 And that was after he went missing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is when he said began the period of when he stopped hearing from his old friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, he said he\u2019s doing what he can \u2018to spread awareness\u2019 that Weston is missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In screenshots shared to the outlet, Hiyu allegedly told Weston to contact him if he ran into any issue, and the student reacted with a heart emoji.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, on Monday, Hiyu text him: \u201cGood evening! How\u2019s the stay going? Hopefully yall are having a good time in Kyoto! Lmk [Let me know] if you need me to recommend you any places [sic].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the message doesn\u2019t appear to have been delivered to his phone, and Weston didn\u2019t respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Weston\u2019s mum, Nancy, the young man had left after an argument broke out over her use of AI to organise their trip on 29 May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nancy told\u00a0that the environmental engineering student at Auburn University, went out into Kyoto on his own while his family visited a temple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not unusual for Weston to blow off steam going to the woods and just exploring,\u201d Nancy said, adding: \u201cThat\u2019s his happy place. I\u2019m thinking \u2026 he\u2019s just off in the woods, and he got lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the family share locations via the app Life360, it found that Weston hopped on a train, visited some shops, and made a purchase at a hardware outlet before his location and phone was turned off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had also been found to have been at the Kyoto station at around 8:15pm, and caught a train to the Yamashina station, before his phone lost network just 14 minutes later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At 8:29pm, his phone lost network, with police believing he was last seen in the Yamashina area, a ward of Kyoto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nancy said in a\u00a0Fb post urging others to aid in the search of her son, that he was last known to have entered the \u2018mountainous forest area near Yamashina, Kyoto\u2019 and asked hikers to help locate him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to leave (Japan) until we find Weston,\u201d Nancy told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Currently, police remain concerned about his safety, as Kyoto Prefectural Police told\u00a0that he doesn\u2019t speak Japanese and likely left intentionally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The best friend of the American student who has been labelled as missing in Japan has revealed their last text conversation together as the search continues. James Higginbotham, known by his peers as \u2018Weston\u2019, is a 20-year-old who went missing,\u00a0after a May meeting with his best friend, Japanese native Hiyu Shikari, who is also 20. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omrnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}