Twenty-seven metal spheres on a school playground; classes moved indoors for two hours
At about 10 a.m. on Sept. 1, a teacher preparing for a physical education class at Sunamachi Third Municipal Elementary School in the eastern wards found small metal spheres scattered across the playground. The TDA collected 27 of them, three to five centimeters across, as drift objects. Pupils continued lessons indoors for roughly two hours until the recovery ended. No one was hurt.
The finder was a teacher pushing a line marker across the playground before third period. Around 10 a.m., from the east side of the assembly platform inward across the track, spheres lay half-buried in the sand, catching the light. He went back to the staff room before counting them and closed the playground under the city's drift-object response procedure. The TDA was notified at 10:12 a.m.; the recovery team arrived at 10:40.
Following the same procedure, the school drew the curtains on the playground side and moved physical education into the gymnasium and classrooms. School lunch ran as normal. The playground reopened shortly after 12:30 p.m. and was in use again that afternoon. The index in the eastern wards had held at "medium" through the previous night.
The TDA recovered 27 spheres, three to five centimeters across, some lighter and some heavier than their size suggests. There are no seams or markings on the surfaces, and the material "cannot be determined on site." Depressions apparently left by their fall remained in the sand, none more than a few centimeters deep. Under the Dimensional Boundary Management Act all 27 have passed into national custody and been sent to the Third Assessment Center, which is already holding the Fukagawa drift objects; the queue is expected to run to several months. "There is no finding at this stage indicating danger," a TDA official said. "It simply takes time to confirm an absence."
No reports of similar spheres from homes or roads in the school district had been received by the evening of the 1st.
The children watched the whole thing from indoors. "I could see everything through the gap in the curtain," a sixth-grade boy said. "I counted 27, and later the agency people said the same number. I'm a bit proud of that." Another pupil said the recovery team photographed each sphere before boxing it: "That was all anyone talked about at lunch."
"Everything came down to following the drill," the principal said. Municipal schools run drift-object evacuation and reporting drills twice a year, and this school had held one in June. "We reminded the children: don't pick it up, don't touch it, report it. Those three will serve them for life." A mother, 41, waiting at the gate said she nearly left work early after the first app notification. "In the end the second message — the playground's open — arrived first." The board of education called the response "as anticipated."
After school, 27 small markers still stood where the depressions were, left by the TDA for its records and not due to be pulled until the 2nd. The custodian, 63, raked around them. "I level that sand every day. I know by hand where it's hard. Today it felt a little lighter under the rake. Probably nothing. But I'll say it anyway." The TDA asks that anyone finding similar objects not touch them and notify the agency or the nearest police station.