MEXICO CITY - A DISTINGUISHED-LOOKING Japanese tourist lingered more than three months at Mexico City's airport, sleeping on the ground and eating in pricey restaurants, until he left with a woman in a taxi, witnesses said.

Nobody knows why the tall, bearded Hiroshi Nohara decided to stay at Benito Juarez airport after missing his connecting flight to Brazil - he apparently has a return ticket to Tokyo, but for 117 days he became a tourist attraction in his own right.

'They say he's got love problems,' Cinnamon Rolls cafeteria employee Ana Elena Ruiz said on Monday. She confessed to growing 'fond' of the polite, often smiling man that reminded her of Tom Hanks in Steven Spielberg's 'The Terminal' (2004).

'He slept over there, used the rest rooms' to clean himself and 'spent every day in the restaurant area,' said maintenance worker Alejandro Garzon.

Mr Nohara's 'documents were in order and there's no law that stops him from staying at the airport. So we couldn't run him off,' said a police officer who asked not to be identified.

The stranger left on Sunday, as mysteriously as he appeared in early September, boarding a taxi with a woman, witnesses said.

'A woman came for him this morning and took him away, but I think he'll be coming back because he didn't say good-bye to any of us,' said Ms Ruiz.

'I think the woman took him out for a spin around the city for a few days.' -- AFP