4 ms·

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 get

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.”

ehnto 5y 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.
- wirthjason 5y 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!
- tluyben2 5y 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.
  - yaysyu 5y ago
    As a resident of Melbourne, I have the same bad experience with GPS signals in the CBD. Something to do with the narrow laneways as well as the tall buildings obscuring the GPS signal
    - tluyben2 5y ago
      It kept bouncing between Russell and Lonsdale, the entire roads; we saw the signal moving down and up Lonsdale and then into Rusell, sometimes going into shops or hotels. The crafty squire guy was the first one who said that gps doesn’t really work in the center. Hope covid allows us to visit again soon; during covid many of my friends there moved up north to Queensland for more and cheaper space. Edit; sorry, I always berate people for the word friends (because people use the word for people they have met once and say crap like; I invited 1000 close friends to my wedding etc) and now I do it myself; I have 1 friend and a bunch of ‘personal acquaintances’ in Melbourne.
88840-8855 5y 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 5y 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.
- Aeolun 5y 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.

ehnto 5y 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.

wirthjason 5y 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!
tluyben2 5y 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.
- yaysyu 5y ago
  As a resident of Melbourne, I have the same bad experience with GPS signals in the CBD. Something to do with the narrow laneways as well as the tall buildings obscuring the GPS signal
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    It kept bouncing between Russell and Lonsdale, the entire roads; we saw the signal moving down and up Lonsdale and then into Rusell, sometimes going into shops or hotels. The crafty squire guy was the first one who said that gps doesn’t really work in the center. Hope covid allows us to visit again soon; during covid many of my friends there moved up north to Queensland for more and cheaper space. Edit; sorry, I always berate people for the word friends (because people use the word for people they have met once and say crap like; I invited 1000 close friends to my wedding etc) and now I do it myself; I have 1 friend and a bunch of ‘personal acquaintances’ in Melbourne.

88840-8855 5y 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 5y 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.
Aeolun 5y 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.