It’s almost impossible to lose anything in Japan

https://twistedsifter.com/videos/why-its-almost-impossible-to-lose-anything-in-japan/

64 63 4 years ago

Interesting to read that

In Japan, citizens are required to take lost property to the Koban (police station). From there, it is either returned or stored at the Tokyo hub until claimed.

A few years ago, I found a wallet on the ground and I took it to the police station. (The experience itself was a bit bizarre, they evidently had a "triage" system where you have to use a computer to select why you're there and get a ticket number, then sit in a waiting room until you're called - mostly with people picking up their kids from the drunk tank - this was a sunday morning).

Anyway, the police officer that eventually received me told me that they don't accept lost wallets, and that basically I was on my own if I wanted to figure out how to return it. (There was stuff with the person's name but no address in the wallet).

abhijat• 4 years ago

Which country are you talking of?

version_five2• 4 years ago

This was in Canada, in a "big" city, with it's own police foce. I don't know that its representative of all police forces - this was obviously one the consultants had got to. (Though as an aside, canada doesn't have many smaller police forces anymore, smaller municipalities all outsource, e.g. to the OPP in Ontario so they may mostly have similar practices).

The only other time I was at a police station was when my car was stolen 20 years ago, and it was very different, with an actual receptionist and a place you could sit down and talk to an officer.

foolfoolz• 4 years ago

you can put a wallet with a id in any mailbox and the post office will mail it to that id. but yes i don’t think a police station would try to identify a wallet owner from just a name if it was not carrying a material about of cash. most people will cancel their cards in a day or so, identifying an owner has very low impact vs the effort

CaliforniaKarl• 4 years ago

I’ve had the opposite experience. And just to be clear, I’m talking about the US.

I noticed a purse left unattended at the bus stop. I saw a bus in the distance, and assumed the owner of the purse was on it.

I called the main number for the nearest police station (at least, the one listed in Google Maps). Around 15 minutes later, an officer arrived, checked the purse, and found a wallet. After getting information from me (any idea whose it was, did I touch it, etc.), the officer took it to the station’s lost-and-found.

_dh542• 4 years ago

Japan’s strong culture of morality.

Do sociologists yet understand why some cultures are strong in morality yet some aren’t? Surely if we understood the forces that drive macro behavior we could duplicate desirable attributes like high morality in other cultures. I would really like it if we had this high level of morality in America.

lovemenot• 4 years ago

I am not a sociologist, but I would think morality of Japanese, such as returning lost items, is just a particular case of their general propensity to follow rules.

It helps explain why we in Japan can have nice things.

_dh542• 4 years ago

is just a particular case of their general propensity to follow rules.

Fair enough but this just kicks the can down the road. Why does Japanese culture have a propensity to follow rules? How can we duplicate that in America?

rgovostes• 4 years ago

Outside many establishments in Japan you will find an umbrella rack full of nearly identical translucent white umbrellas (the style sold for a few hundred yen at any convenience store). Many of these have been inadvertently left behind, the rain having stopped while the owner was inside.

Once I found myself in the reverse situation, sitting in a friend's bar when a downpour started. I asked him if I could take one of the abandoned umbrellas to get home, but he refused, saying they belong to his customers. He agreed that no one would ever come back to claim one, laughing at the absurdity of it, but he couldn't risk being discovered as the bartender who abetted the theft of a misplaced umbrella.

wirthjason3• 4 years ago

Speak the truth! If you have a white handle umbrella it’s a “give a penny, take a penny” situation. Countless times I’ve had a newish one taken and the only one left is some crappy junk that’s rusted out as half the spokes broke.

I get it though. They are all similar (even though they are not, some still have the plastic wrap or price tag on the handle). Mistakes are mistakes.

What really pisses me off is when you take a nicer one (those clear ones are crap) and it’s totally different from all the other umbrellas and it goes missing. No excusing “sorry I mixed up my clear umbrella with the white handle for your clear umbrella with the white handle”. I hope there’s a social place in hell for those people.

Aeolun4• 4 years ago

All my white umbrellas get a blue-red tag stuck to their handle. It serves the double purpose of making them easy to identify for me, and so ‘different’ to other people they wouldn’t want to use it over a plain white one.

kenneth• 4 years ago

In Hong Kong it's common for bars to always have extra leftover umbrellas that were left behind. As a regular they'd always just give me one if I got caught out in the rain. I've also left umbrellas out countless times. It's all an inadvertent pay it forward scheme

patio11• 4 years ago

Not a particularly good article so some things that y'all might find interesting:

"Honor" and "a sense of responsibility" explains very little and good, widely distributed Schelling points (koban and, to a lesser extent, commercial/transit centers information/etc desks) that both do the right thing for lost/found items and are widely believed to do the right thing explains most of it.

You are legally entitled to a reward of up to 25% of the lost property's value in Japan. Almost everyone waives it; you'll be asked about it when filling out the paperwork. In my limited experience (five times?) they do try to avoid influencing you either way with the wording, and don't say "Everyone waives this." This does come up occasionally with regards to cash hordes.

Foreigners interacting with this system are, unfortunately, frequently seen as a burden by the cops ("Can't even fill out their own forms grumblegrumble") and brushed off unless someone in the koban decides either to be a go-getter or that this particular foreigner is likely socially established. In some cases the form of the brushoff takes the form of an impromptu Japanese test ("What do you want me to do with that?") where knowing that the magic words ("I would like to file a lost property report." / "紛失物届けを提出したいです”) is treated as being suddenly worthy of prompt service.

This can be heavily YMMV based on the individual cop, the station/koban, and (regrettably) "How likely people who look like you are to be a frequent source of aggravation for cops in this neighborhood?"

twofornone• 4 years ago

Honor" and "a sense of responsibility" explains very little and good, widely distributed Schelling points (koban and, to a lesser extent, commercial/transit centers information/etc desks)

I feel like you're bending over backwards to dismiss that this really does come down to culture. At the very least you need a sizable population willing to forgo the easy, untracable reward of free cash/property. Especially when you go on to state that in almost all cases the reward is waived, only further suggesting a culture where honor is more important than spending money.

As someone who has lived in Asia, this different culture exists in some other countries (like korea, possibly to a lesser extent) but is rather absent from China, no doubt influenced by the psychological horrors of china's particularly brutal bout with full marxism.

antifa• 4 years ago

Can't be any worse than the boots of capitalism and white supremacy.

blamazon2• 4 years ago

As a cultural layperson but occasional items-losing tourist in this region I was confused reading this as my experience was quite the opposite. But on recollection every lost-items interaction I've had as a foreign tourist in Japan was facilitated by a railway or a hotel in a major city, and likely this skewed my experience.

sho• 4 years ago

good, widely distributed Schelling points (koban and, to a lesser extent, commercial/transit centers information/etc desks)

These aren't "schelling points". The nearest appropriate location of whatever kind (koban if it's outdoors or somewhere small, information desk in a mall or station) is likely obvious to both the loser and finder given the context and is no more a schelling point than, eg, the local hospital if someone got hit by a car.

A real Schelling point is more like, eg, the statue of hachiko in Shibuya which is so famous a landmark and prominent in everyone's shared cultural understanding that if you told two strangers to meet in Shibuya with no other information it's actually pretty likely they'd both just go there by default.

both do the right thing for lost/found items and are widely believed to do the right thing explains most of it

Yeah, but what you're missing is the expectation that the finder will do the right thing too - which is absolutely cultural.

_cs2017_2• 4 years ago

In my experience, in major American cities, anything valuable left in plain view in a car is stolen within 30 minutes (and that requires breaking the car window or picking the lock). But you're saying that things dropped on the ground will not be stolen, and instead returned to the nearest police station if only there was one not too far?

Could you provide any arguments or evidence to support your claim?

ehnto4• 4 years ago

Even that's going to depend on the city you're in, and where you're at in the city.

Aeolun4• 4 years ago

It’s not really something you prove. The stats speak for themselves right?

Anecdotaly, we’ve lost bags, bottles, wallets and phones, and everything has (so far) been returned.

Even a missing hat that had travelled all the way down to the end of the train line.

I also left our $200 Strider unattended in the park for several hours, you really don’t think about it too much.

haraldooo• 4 years ago

Can confirm. I once lost my three week Japan Rail Pass (green car) somewhere in Tokyo station which has > 3 million passengers per day and is just huge. This was my first day in Japan with rides planned through the whole country. These rides would have cost a fortune to replace as you cannot buy a JRP in Japan. It took less then an hour to get it back. I assume nowhere else in the world this would have played out the same way. I was very thankful that day to say the least.

blamazon2• 4 years ago

I inadvertently left my water bottle at a ticket machine somewhere in the Tokyo rail apparatus and then traveled 4-6 stations away and reported it to an info booth there. An attendant brought it to me on the next train less than ten minutes later. Mind blown.

It was a heavily insulated water bottle and keeping ice in it made a world of difference as I was traveling at the hottest time of the year.

A small object can be insignificant when it is anonymous but significant to an individual. It's nice when other humans "have our back" at scale.

astrange4• 4 years ago

Btw, you can buy a rail pass after you get to Japan now. I mean… they won't let you into the country, but besides that.

wirthjason3• 4 years ago

This article is obviously not talking about bicycles. :)

Is there some kind of HN Japanese article trend recently?

In any case I appreciate the culture of getting lost stuff returned in Japan much more than “magical” conbinis.

The article mentions money so I’ll add my anecdote. Many years ago as a student we had a going away party for some friends who were returning to the US. Someone had a “genius” plan to beat the jet lag. Since their flight was early in the morning we planned an all nighter so they would catch one of the first planes to the airport, board the plane and sleep the entire flight, waking up back in the US “refreshed”.

About half though the night and after way too many drinks I got sick. It was well past last train so my friends hailed me a cab back to my host family’s house about an hour away in suburban Kokobunji. The next thing I know I’m passed out in the back seat of the taxi and my parents wake me up, pay the $100 cab fare and help me into the house.

I wake up the next morning with a stiff hangover to find so much stuff missing, but most importantly my wallet. It had all the important stuff: a couple hundred in yen, my train pass, my ID cards, and most importantly, my residence card. My stomach sank thinking how I’d get it back.

Later that day as I was recovering the taxi driver came by the house and returned my wallet —- everything intact. I offered all the cash I had but he refused to take it. I cannot imagine he would make such a trip back out that far to return some stupid gaijin’s stuff. It left a permanent memory of people’s generosity.

On the flip side, a Japanese friend of mine and I would practice English. He was always interested in US slang, particularly swear words, which he never quite got right. I’ll always remember the day he nailed it.

He got $500 from his grandparents as a present for graduating high school and entering Waseda University. He called me up and says “I lost my wallet, I got the wallet back but fuuuck man, they took the money.”

ehnto4• 4 years ago

Here's my anecdote: I lost my phone in Japan once, in Tokyo. I was steaming after a night of karaoke and somewhere between the bar, taxi and my hotel, I'd lost my phone. I wandered down to the street at 3am, retracing my steps, and a police officer noticed me and asked what I was looking for. He pointed me back to the hotel reception where where we got on the phone to the taxi company, and then directly onto the driver, who said he hadn't found anything. What was odd, was that I didn't know the taxi company at all, the receptionist had just remembered what I pulled up in.

Accepting that I had lost my phone in a foreign country, I went back upstairs and found it immediately upon walking back into the room. I'd just dropped it under my bag. I went back down and apologized for wasting the receptionists time, but they wouldn't accept it.

The morale of the story being that there was no shortage of help, and that I was a big dummy.

wirthjason3• 4 years ago

    > I was steaming after a night of karaoke and somewhere between the bar, taxi and my hotel, I'd lost my phone.

A lost phone sobers you up pretty quickly! Especially for what would have been a very fun night. I’m sure there was a nice sigh of relief after getting your phone back though. All is well that ends well!

tluyben22• 4 years ago

I'd just dropped it under my bag

We (wife and me) had a, now hilarious, run through Melbourne Chasing my iPhone which was ‘stolen’ when we were in a restaurant ; we used the Apple find my phone feature and the phone kept moving all through Melbourne. We had told hotel staff to open up a room we ‘knew’ it was in (luckily they did not), we chased a truck, etc etc. It was in our hotel room, under my bag all that time; I set the stolen sound so it must have made a hell of a fuss; it was making alarm sounds until it was empty. Apple find my phone was absolutely worthless in Melbourne, not sure if it improved but it was fun after; I did not know I would or could run this many miles for a phone. Definitely alcohol as a sober me would’ve probably just emailed the insurance and got a new phone.

toast0• 4 years ago

I'd just dropped it under my bag.

That reminds me of when I was on a work trip, my wife came with me, but went sightseeing on the weekdays. One day she had gone to Versailles, and wasn't back by the time I got to the hotel after work. After waiting a reasonable amount of time, I called her cell phone and heard it ringing and just about died of anxiety. Fortunately, her phone wasn't left in the room, she was in the hallway, seconds away from opening the door.

stevekemp• 4 years ago

I was steaming after a ..

Every now and again I get a feeling of nostalgia for the Scotland, and I have to say reading that reminded me so strongly of being there it was unreal.

You could be from anywhere, but it's fascinating what even a single word of slang or dialect will trigger memories and emotions.

johnwalkr2• 4 years ago

I had a GPS mishap in Nagano that ended up with my rental car at the top of a ski slope. In my defense it happens a lot because there’s a road there only open in summer, no indication it’s not a road after a certain point in the winter (it’s a groomed ski run), and has street lights that sure make it look like the road continues.

The owner of my $50 a night hotel picked us up where I was stuck, insisting we take our skis with us. The next morning he took my keys and insisted we go skiing, and he would take care of getting the car out. He said it would be about $50 (rough conversion from yen) to pay for a tow out with the resort’s groomer. All in all he probably spent 6 hours helping me. The bill was actually $100 (still much cheaper than I actually expected), but he would only accept $50 since that’s what he told me earlier. His wife also called the GPS manufacturer and complained.

88840-8855• 4 years ago

Yes, the article is a bit black and white. Of course it is possible to lose things in Japan. There are a lot of bad guys and girls there.

I lived there, worked there. I once dated a girl who turned out to have mental health issues. She probably had a sociopathic disorder; often she would just walk into a store and steal groceries. She had money, in fact she was doing very well financially. And yet she stole.

The other time, she came back with a bike she stole from a JR station. She kept it for a few days and then left it somewhere. When necessary, she stole again, again and again.

Japan is strange in many ways. Bikes are registered and have something like a "number plate" (that's a sticker on the frame). I have experienced several police checks myself. I was stopped with my bike every time the police was doing random checks. The police checked the registration and asked me many questions - I guess because of racial profiling (Japan is a very racist country). Why am I telling this? This girl was also stopped a few times with the stolen bikes, but she had this "thing" where she could keep a cool head in such situations and lie/convince people easily. She never felt any consequences for her actions.

To make it short; It was a horrible time dating her. Thank God this "relationship" didn't last too long.

mise_en_place• 4 years ago

My sister is very much like that, and it’s also why I had to cut contact with her for a while. She would often take things of mine without asking, and wouldn’t feel any remorse. She is also an extremely good liar, one of the best I’ve ever seen.

Aeolun4• 4 years ago

There are a lot of bad guys and girls there.

I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that. Of course you have a lot of them in absolute terms in a country of 110M people, but relatively I think they’re doing pretty well.

cko• 4 years ago

I loved Tokyo when I visited especially because of the safety. A coworker happened to be there with me at the same time and we even joked about moving there.

I understand they have a tough immigration system.

Short of getting a job there, how can a US citizen live there?

skhr0680• 4 years ago

I understand they have a tough immigration system.

It's a joke (in a good way) compared to other developed nations, the whole process costs $50 or so.

Short of getting a job there, how can a US citizen live there?

Be in the military, get posted to the Japanese office of your company, get married to a Japanese, or have a stack of cash

Aeolun4• 4 years ago

Yeah, getting refugee status is impossible, but it’s really easy to immigrate as long as you can get someone to hire you.

astrange4• 4 years ago

It's much, much easier to immigrate to Japan than the US; you just need a 4-year college degree and someone to sponsor your work visa.

The main issue for Americans is that wages are lower, might not be able to pay student loans or save up for that house.

Galanwe• 4 years ago

Japan is often taken as an example for this kind of things, but I think the overall thing can span to most of Asia, though with varying degrees.

Singapore would be an even greater extreme. I remember a friend telling me he was seated at a restaurant table, and two girls on the table next to him go out to smoke outside. The waiter came back to give back the credit card to the girls and found their table empty. The waiter then proceeded to give the credit card to my friend and told him to hand it back to the girls when they come back from smoking. The waiter apparently considered absurd the possibility of my friend keeping the card for himself and leaving.

emteycz• 4 years ago

Wouldn't stealing that card get you flogging or something like it? Who would steal in these conditions...

ehnto4• 4 years ago

I think a lot of what makes Japan work in some of these more beneficial ways is organization and process, and I think that's a hard pill for some to swallow. Certainly was for me, because I hate bureaucracy and rigid process, but love efficiency and pragmatism.

You see things getting achieved in ridiculous accuracy and efficiency over there, and it's usually backed by a lot of process, checks and balances. Cleaning the train stations in Tokyo is handled by a special forces level of planning, regiment and and execution.

There's also a lot of human labor involved, locker boxes in big cities are checked daily, maintained daily to weekly, fixed on the spot or marked for maintenance that gets done very quickly. That's all process and regiment, preventative maintenance and pro-active checking rather than waiting for things to fail and get reported.

As always, Japan is huge, and diverse, it's not all like that, but certainly a lot of it is.

_tik_• 4 years ago

from my experience this is quite normal in Taiwan and Singapore too. I saw few leave their iPhone or Laptop on the food court table.

srvmshr• 4 years ago

I forgot my laptop backpack on the benches in Shibuya station on a drunk Friday night. The station staff retrieved and kept it for me. I thought it was a goner and I was few months old to Japan then.

The honesty system works on mutual trust

vagrantJin• 4 years ago

I must say, the US seems to have a fetish for Japan as Japan has a fetish for the US. It's cute.

dr_dshiv• 4 years ago

I left my bag on a train the first day I arrived in Japan. I had fallen asleep and woke up to a conductor shouting at me. I grabbed my backpack and hurried out of the train. But, as soon as the doors shut, I realized my other bag was inside.

I went to the train authority and registered the lost item and everyone assured me that it would be found, no problem. I called back several times over the next 10 days but it never showed up. The train person told me “it must have been a Korean.” I was like, whaaa? My bag is lost and you are going to comfort me with racism?

Ah well, that was literally my only negative experience in the country.

brabel2• 4 years ago

“it must have been a Korean.”

Everybody here is basically making the point that Japanese are extremely unlikely to keep items they find, which is basically as racist as saying "other nationalities are more likely to keep stuff", except that in this particular case, the person singled out a particular nationality instead of generalizing - I find generalizing the whole rest of the world even worse than doing that.

Barrin92• 4 years ago

Not really. It's one thing to point out that Japan has a unique culture, which is very obvious. It's an entirely other thing to blame foreigners once that culture doesn't work as expected.

In particular because Koreans have very strong lost and found systems and high trust as well. Blaming Koreans is a reflex given the strong anti-Korean sentiment in Japan.

hohoemi8• 4 years ago

which is basically as racist as saying "other nationalities are more likely to keep stuff"

You can call it racist if you want but it's absolutely true.

hbarka• 4 years ago

Here in San Francisco, what are the chances that these Norwegian tourists can even hope to be reunited with their possessions? https://twitter.com/powellmason415/status/150229144319646105...

openplatypus• 4 years ago

Meanwhile, anecdotally, I once found someone driving licence on the street, in small Bavarian town. When I returned the driving license at the Police Station I met with bewilderment. Like never ever returned these before.

I hope this was just an isolated case.

German youth is also tought morality but not sure it always sticks.

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

I lost my passport, my copy of lonely planet, my rail pass and about 400usd in yen.

For less than an hour.

I left it at a station. Boarded the train, realised I didn't have it when I got to the other end (and couldn't find the pass to exit). The station staff offered to give me some cash to help me get to my destination and it was no problem I didn't have the pass because I was "obviously respectable".

Then they came back to tell me my things had been found. I asked if I could take the train back to pick it up.

No need! The driver is bringing it to me on the next train, he'll be 30minutes. Please enjoy some free coffee in this cafe and wait.

What a country.

ilrwbwrkhv• 4 years ago

Huh.. my jaw drops.. Even though this is an anecdote, I don't think this could ever happen in America.

euroderf• 4 years ago

Centralization of Lost & Found is a Good Thing (TM). The city of Helsinki, on the other hand, has completely screwed up. Splintering of lost & found combined with outsourcing/privatization. Bah humbug.

anuraaga• 4 years ago

These articles seem to always leave out that if you turn in an item you are legally entitled to a finder's fee from the owner based on the value of the lost item.

Security cameras are also plentiful and we'll staffed.

It feels good to call this a matter of morals but incentivizing return and fear of being caught by a camera are not quite morals, but on the bright side would be more easy to reproduce in other countries given interest.

It’s almost impossible to lose anything in Japan

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