KYOTO — An English teacher in Japan claims he encountered a humanoid creature just outside the former capital of Japan.

Toriki Watanabe, 36, told Cryptozoology News on Thursday that the encounter occurred in the Kyoto prefecture at 10 p.m. on Nov. 30.

“I was driving from Tokyo to Kyoto for my brother’s wedding. I decided to drive at night so I can spend more time with family during day,” he said. “I am stopping at small shop by side of the road. There is some surrounding forest. I am standing around near shop smoking a cigarette and looking into the forest,” he added.

Watanabe says that he then noticed “a figure shaped like a man” about 200 feet away.

“I call out and have no reply. The creature is slightly hidden by trees. It turns around and begins to walk away but not in a human-like way.”

40 seconds later, says Watanabe, the mysterious figure is out of sight.

The eyewitness described the creature as a 6-feet-tall humanoid covered in a grey skin, “slightly muscular” and with a “slouched” posture.

“No visible garment worn. It was hunched over, dragging feet along the ground. The face was obscured by the trees,” he claims, adding that the creature had a “faint yellow or white light coming from behind it just around its lower back”.

Watanabe believes he came across a shirime, a Japanese folklore creature referenced by artist Yosa no Buson with his yokai painting collection in the 1700s.

A shirime crawls away from a samurai in this Yosa Buson painting

The story states that a samurai had first found it the while walking at night on his way to Kyoto. It is considered a mischievous creature that enjoys startling people, says Zack Davisson, a translator and scholar of Japanese folklore and author of Yurei: The Japanese Ghost.

A series of humanoid encounters have been reportedly taking place in Asia during the past few months.

In late August, a geography teacher in Singapore said he had spotted a Mothman creature at an abandoned mansion in Istana Woodneuk. A month later, the teacher told Cryptozoology News he had come across “two baby Mothman” in the same area.