Best friend reveals final text sent to student who's gone missing in Japan

The best friend of the American student who has been labelled as missing in Japan has revealed their last text conversation together as the search continues.

James Higginbotham, known by his peers as ‘Weston’, is a 20-year-old who went missing in Kyoto after a May meeting with his best friend, Japanese native Hiyu Shikari, who is also 20.

The pair met in Japan after Weston, and his mother, Nancy, father and brother all travelled from Alabama to celebrate Grayton’s (brother) graduation from school.

During this trip, Weston and Nancy visited Hiyu, who was a middle school friend of Weston’s in the US prior to him moving.

The family met Hiyu in Tokyo, with the students taking a picture together at the reunion.

James Higginbotham has been missing since 29 May (Facebook/Nancy Higginbotham)

However, it was after this date that Hiyu said something happened that left him feeling ‘worried’.

He told the U.S. Sun: “We had such a great time at a restaurant in Shinjuku, which is in Tokyo. Right after that, I tried to contact him on how he was doing in Kyoto, because I was in Kyoto a couple of weeks ago, and also the typhoon was coming as I was kind of worried, and I messaged him, ‘How’s the trip going?’ And that was after he went missing.”

This is when he said began the period of when he stopped hearing from his old friend.

Now, he said he’s doing what he can ‘to spread awareness’ that Weston is missing.

In screenshots shared to the outlet, Hiyu allegedly told Weston to contact him if he ran into any issue, and the student reacted with a heart emoji.

Then, on Monday, Hiyu text him: “Good evening! How’s the stay going? Hopefully yall are having a good time in Kyoto! Lmk [Let me know] if you need me to recommend you any places [sic].”

His last conversation was with a friend (Hiyu Shikari)

However, the message doesn’t appear to have been delivered to his phone, and Weston didn’t respond.

According to Weston’s mum, Nancy, the young man had left after an argument broke out over her use of AI to organise their trip on 29 May.

Nancy told CNN that the environmental engineering student at Auburn University, went out into Kyoto on his own while his family visited a temple.

“It’s not unusual for Weston to blow off steam going to the woods and just exploring,” Nancy said, adding: “That’s his happy place. I’m thinking … he’s just off in the woods, and he got lost.”

As the family share locations via the app Life360, it found that Weston hopped on a train, visited some shops, and made a purchase at a hardware outlet before his location and phone was turned off.

He had also been found to have been at the Kyoto station at around 8:15pm, and caught a train to the Yamashina station, before his phone lost network just 14 minutes later.

At 8:29pm, his phone lost network, with police believing he was last seen in the Yamashina area, a ward of Kyoto.

Nancy said in a Facebook post urging others to aid in the search of her son, that he was last known to have entered the ‘mountainous forest area near Yamashina, Kyoto’ and asked hikers to help locate him.

“We’re not going to leave (Japan) until we find Weston,” Nancy told CNN.

Currently, police remain concerned about his safety, as Kyoto Prefectural Police told ABC News that he doesn’t speak Japanese and likely left intentionally.