Wasuremono: Forgotten or lost item(s), something left behind (in a store, train, or taxi, etc).
What do you do if you find a forgotten item? How about a $20 bill? A $100 bill? $500? If you’re Japanese, you would most likely take it to the police station. Last year over 35 million dollars worth of yen was turned in.
On a typical rainy day, around 3,000 umbrellas will be turned in in Tokyo alone. Each one of the nearly 400,000 umbrellas turned in yearly are meticulously tagged with the date and location found.
Officials at Tokyo’s lost and found center try to locate the owner by making an average of about 250 phone calls a day and sending notices by post. And around 300 people come in daily to claim their valuables.
Those who find lost items are entitled to receive a reward of 5-20 percent of the property’s value. Once three months have passed, the law stipulates that unclaimed belongings — excluding items containing personal information such as credit cards — become the property of the finder.
Finders who have clearly indicated an interest in the items then have up to two months to claim them before they become the property of the local government. In 1980, a man found a stash of 100 million yen – around $2.8 million US today – and ended up a legitimate multimillionaire when it was unclaimed.
Still, with 4 million items turned in each year it’s a massive job to catalog and store the goods until claimed or sold by the government, and the six-story building in Tokyo’s Bunkyo Ward is quickly outgrowing its space. Last year they dealt with 220,000 articles of clothing, 30,000 mobile phones, 18,000 eyeglasses, and 17,000 wallets, not to mention train passes, urns of ashes, a wheelchair, and even a very large balloon.
No matter what the value, the first instinct of a Japanese is to get it back to the owner, usually by giving it to the restaurant or shop owners, bus or train officials, or taking it to the local police.
What drives this level of honesty where people go out of their way to turn in money and menial things alike? Why, mothers of course. But the lessons continue in the school system with mandatory cultural training on morality from first grade through ninth.
Children sometimes bring in ¥1, ¥5 and ¥10 coins they find on the street, or even a little hair band, said one of the officials. “We can’t tell them not to worry about handing such things in, so we thank them and praise their good deeds.”
Also see: Lost and Found Daze
