Nine-year-old caught driving to grandma's house

A 9-year-old Japanese boy is in police custody after he took his family's car on a drive to visit his grandmother.

Police received a call at around 7:30 a.m. on Monday from a passerby saying there was a car driving along a prefectural road without anyone at the wheel. An officer subsequently found the boy sitting in the driver's seat of an automatic small car in a nearby convenience store parking lot.

"It's my first time driving, but I learned from watching dad and playing at the video arcade," he told police.

The boy told police that he'd taken the car from the family home at around 6 a.m. He was planning to visit his grandmother in nearby Sekigahara, but had got lost.

The boy is around 135 cm in height, and managed to control the car by sitting at the front of the seat and clinging to wheel, allowing him to reach the pedals.

Police warned the boy's parents to look after their car more carefully in the future.