Ouch

There have been a spate of weird injuries in Japan this week. Not sure which of these two is the more gruesome:

1. The escalator-grater

A woman had her big toe on her left foot severed after it was caught in an escalator at a railway station building Sunday night, police said.

Local police are questioning officials at Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corp., the manufacturer of the escalator, and the municipal government that manages the building on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in injury.

At about 9:55 p.m. on Sunday, the woman, a 27-year-old company employee from Kawasaki's Nakahara-ku, was standing on an escalator in the JR Kawasaki Station building in the city's Kawasaki-ku and didn't notice a hole on the vertical part of the step just in front of her, investigators said.

When the step receded at the end of the escalator, her big toe was caught in the hole and was severed.

2. The motorway-cutaway

A motorcyclist traveled for two kilometers without noticing his right leg had been severed after hitting a median strip on a toll road here early Monday morning, police said.

The 54-year-old man noticed that his right leg had been cut off about 10 centimeters below the knee when he arrived at an interchange on the Hamana Bypass of Route 1 in Hamamatsu. Another motorcyclist traveling with him returned to the median strip to pick up the severed leg. He was rushed to a local hospital with his severed leg in an ambulance.

Investigators suspect that the pain from the injuries was so severe that he did not notice that his leg had been severed. The accident occurred at about 6:30 a.m. while traveling with 10 other motorcyclists.