A Japanese man who was mauled by a 6ft bear escaped by using his karate skills.
Atsushi Aoki, 63, was fishing in a mountain creek when he came face-to-face with the enormous Asian black bear in an unprovoked attack.
The 6ft 3in animal knocked fisherman Mr Aoki to the ground, turned him over and bit him on the leg.
But instead of trying to outrun it, Mr Aoki decided to use his karate skills to fight the bear. He hit out at the bear’s eyes and sent it running back into the woods.
"I thought it's either 'I kill him or he kills me,'" Mr Aoki told public broadcaster NHK.
Despite injuries to his head, arm and leg, he managed to hobble back to his car and drive to a hospital northwest of Tokyo.
A local police officer told AFP: "He drove himself to hospital, and he even remembered to grab the fish that he had caught.”
Japanese media picked up Mr Aoki’s story and called it a triumph of man versus nature. But authorities in the country have warned against relying on karate when coming face-to-face with the animals.
