Just in case, someone is wondering: I am in Tokyo.
The flight was more pleasant than I expected. Even though the plane was full (I suspected that when I checked in online), there was almost one hour delay from Frankfurt, and we had to take a bus to the plane instead of accessing via a finger (it is quite impressive to be standing under a 747), I think this was the best long flight ever. I managed to have some deep sleep for many hours (my poor japanese seat neighbour had to literally jump over me to go to the toilet – I saw him when I opened one eye for a few seconds), and I had some nice talk with a bunch of Spaniards coming to a trade fair to Tokyo.
Furthermore, when I picked my bag up, I had a small present. A cute pink tiger panther, with a biiig heart, and very very dirty. It seemed it had suffered a lot. I thought it was a joke and I looked around to see if there was a hidden camera… But nobody came to confirm my suspect. As I had to claim because my bag got broken at some point of my trip, I also gave that back… This time, I didn’t give any contact information to keep it if the owner doesn’t appear. 🙂
Japan is probably the place in the world with the greatest number of vending machines per square meter. You find them in every corner, and in some places, you can even find ten of them.
And what can you buy here? Almost any drink. From water to coffee, both cold… and hot! Yes, these machines provide both hot and cold stuff…
One of my guests pointed out something interesting about this… “Hot and cold? So many lights? 24 hours a day? That means a lot of energy.” Completely right, but so it is…
Today is one of those days one would skip from the calendar. I will spend the whole day in airports and airplanes, back to Tokyo. I will probably have no nice seat neighbour to share some talk with, so I will focus in sleeping (I will use some help for this for first time) in the extremely noisy 747, as well as watching some movies and reading my book… Funny, isn’t it?
Last weekend we found a Channel bag with some jewels inside, which had been forgotten by someone after buying a train ticket in the machine. We took it and waited for a while to check if someone would come to pick it… but nobody arrived.
So, we wrote a note and went to the closest police station to give the bag and its valuable content to them, assuming that whoever lost it would go to the police to check if someone had found it. The japanese police stations are called Koban, and there are lots of them everywhere. They have a reduced number of policemen there (typically 3) and they do almost nothing, as criminality is not a big issue in this country.
– We want to thank you for having brought the lost object to us.
– You are welcome
– We want to ask you if you want a reward for this?
– What????
– Yes, do you want a reward for the object?
No, thank you, there is no need for that.
After that, she talked to the policeman, and then again to me:
– Do you allow us to give your contact details (phone) if the owner of this object appears?
– Yes, why not?
And then, it was time for the form. This time I suggested the policeman to fill it in, as it normally takes me a long time to understand the different fields in the . After that, he gave me a copy of the form, and told me that if in 3 months I haven’t got any news from them, that would mean that the owner of the bag hadn’t appeared, and according to the Japanese Law, the bag would belong to us…
So, this was a nice experience for many reasons. I could check “in situ” that people in the kobans have nothing to do. I got also surprised by the option of asking for a reward (I found it, and if you want it back, please reward me), although I still do regret of not having answered yes to that question… Now, I would not wonder about how and who can fix the amount for the reward. And of course, I have realized that they have a perfect process to make the finder get the object if no one claims it.
I will update you in less than three months. 🙂
