The best friend of the missing Auburn University student who mysteriously vanished during a family trip to Japan revealed their haunting last text exchanges, shortly after the pair reunited in Tokyo.
James “Weston” Higginbotham, 20, reconnected with Hiyu Shikari, 20, in Japan — they were close friends who attended the same middle school in the US before Shikari moved to the island around 2019.
Their final encounter came at a dinner in Shinjuku, a popular tourist destination in Tokyo, after Shikari met up with Higginbotham and his family, the US Sun reported.
Shikari told the outlet that he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary with his friend, and added that Higginbotham seemed excited about the trip he was on with his family to celebrate his younger brother Grayton’s high school graduation.
He texted Higginbotham on May 26, “Thank you so much. … Enjoying your stay in Japan!!”
“Feel free to contact me whenever you face a problem.”
Higginbotham replied to the text with a heart emoji.
The missing student’s cell phone last pinged on Monday, when Shikari messaged him once more asking how his family vacation was going.
“Good evening! How’s the stay going?” he wrote to Higginbotham.
“Hopefully yall are having a good time in Kyoto! Lmk if you need me to recommend any places,”
But the text message failed to deliver — and was never answered.
“We had such a great time at a restaurant in Shinjuku, which is in Tokyo,” Shikari told the Sun about his last encounter with his friend.
“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,” he continued.
“And so I didn’t get any contact with him after I met him. I’ve been doing what I can to spread awareness.”
Higginbotham went for a hike on May 29 and was last seen in the Yamashina section of Kyoto, an area known for its dense forests and mountainous trails.
He had been arguing with his mother, Nancy, who told CNN that he was irritated by her use of ChatGPT to plan their trip to Japan, citing his concerns about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence.
Efforts to find Higginbotham have been complicated by Tropical Storm Jangmim which moved from Okinawa into the mainland — bringing whipping 75mph winds and torrential rainfall on May 30, according to reports. Rescue crews in Yamashina were forced to wade through waist-high mud during their search for the missing American.
“I saw him as a best friend, a brother,” Shikari said.
“He was such a nice friend and when I first met him, I felt like nothing has changed. “We talked about politics, we talked about AI, we talked about a lot of things that’s going on in the world.”