♥ATISHOO's LiFe♥

SENDAI -- The local mayor surprised the media when he appeared at a news conference over the weekend with his hair shaved as an apology over a taxi ticket abuse scandal.

Sendai Mayor Katsuhiko Umehara, 55, held the news conference to announce his candidacy for the next mayoral race scheduled for July 26.

Umehara shaved his hair to express an apology after coming under fire from the municipal assembly for his repeated misuse of taxi tickets. Bowing his head, Umehara told reporters that he had never had his hair clipped this short before, but that he did so to "somehow convey my regret and apology over the incident."

During the period from August 2005, when Umehara assumed the office of mayor, to the end of 2008, he used 1,584 taxi tickets worth approximately 2.68 million yen in total, with the destinations for 1,012 of them remaining unknown, according to a Sendai audit committee official. It was also revealed that the mayor had handed over some tickets to a third party.

Umehara has already paid back taxi fees worth 2.38 million yen, for which no destination was recorded. The mayor also announced his decision to return some 290,000 yen for tickets whose purpose of use or the recipients cannot be specified.

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