While doing a transfer on the Shinkansen in Hiroshima, I left my camera bag at a noodle kiosk on the platform (around $3k worth of equipment). Didn't realize it until 2 hours after getting on the next train.
When we arrived at our destination, I told my friend we were meeting (a Japanese native) what happened, and she reassured me that it would be right where I left it (said something about there being a "taboo" with the Japanese and touching other people's private property).
So we walked over to the JR attendant and explained what happened, and in no time at all she had the other station attendant on the line who confirmed they found my bag. Just as easy as that.
Then I proceeded to lose my wallet and passport in a taxi, which we recovered just as easily!
Japan is a great country to visit, if while abroad you displace the part of your brain that keeps track of things...
On the first day of our last trip taking my grandmother back to her home village outside of Kyoto, some of her luggage was left behind on the train, and while Lost and Found managed to pull it off at a later stop, it had gotten a pretty far distance from where we were heading.
I navigated to the small station on the lower platform where the attendants held her luggage and gave them her name. The younger one asked where my grandmother was and then gave me a regretful look when I said she was disabled and wouldn't be able to travel this far, because they could only release the bag to its owner.
An older attendant pulled him aside then stepped up and asked me what my name was. "I'm her grandson, Washadjeffmad. I reported the missing luggage.", I explained and held out my passport. Without looking at it, he sighed and stepped off again. When he reappeared, he asked me again where she was, and I told him- on her way to Kyoto. He closed his eyes, said something I didn't catch, and then asked "Are you sure she's not here?" Clearly she wasn't. It'd been a decade, but was my Japanese really so bad?
Another man emerged from the back to observe his two obviously frustrated coworkers, then pulled them back to talk. When they reappeared this time, the older man asked, "Are you Washadjeffmad's grandmother?" And it finally clicked.
If you steal even a few dollars of merchandise from a corner store, the police can hold you for a number of days without trial. And most people won't feel sorry because that's what happens to thieves, so you should have known not to do it.
A society decides what's acceptable, and how far they're willing to go to uphold these expectations.
I once found a wallet on the sidewalk outside a mall in Japan. I tried to drop it at the mall's lost and found, but the security guard there took me with him to a police box. The policeman there took me to the local police station, and we spent the next hour filling out a report. They were all very friendly and appreciative that I turned it in, but it was really quite an ordeal. If I were to find something valuable again, I might just leave it alone to avoid the hassle.
It's funny, but in South Africa crime and especially theft is very common, and at the same time, personal property sometimes find their way back to you.
This especially tends to happen if for example you were robbed and your wallet was left behind or let's say the police were harassing you and threw your driver's license over a fence or something (true story).
I think the reason for this is that the serial criminals are really <1% of the population and probably >50% are really just normal and usually decent people.
I'd always heard about this, but the one time I left my backpack in a Yamanote Line train, it was returned with around $2000 worth of cash (in multiple different countries' currencies) missing from my wallet. My wallet was really deep inside a bag inside a bag, too, so someone clearly went digging into my backpack.
I lost my passport (didn't know at the time) at NRT. I had left it on a counter at a coffee shop. About 15 minutes later while sitting at the gate an airport employee ran up to me and handed it back. Just amazing.
I’ve done something similar. Dropped my hotspot in a cab and didn’t realize until after dinner a couple of hours later. Had the restaurant call the cab company and they tracked down which cab it was, confirmed it was there and had the same cab drop it off for us again at the restaurant. I don’t think this would’ve happened anywhere else.
Though don’t get a false sense of complacency; the crime rate is low but not zero. My friends had a couple of snowboards stolen from a hotel luggage concierge.
LOL, we went by that on platform noodle shop (I think they specialize in Soba) a couple times this summer, but never had the time to eat there in the end. :) Was their food good ? :-D
There are both amazingly good and amazingly bad things about Japanese culture.
The shame of being seen to be not honest or respecting people's property leads to amazing responsibility and kindness.
But it also leads to people being depressed and feeling constrained not to be able to break out of societal expectations.
The very things that make us love Japan, would make you go crazy to live there. So enjoy the privilege of being able to visit and experience the benefits, while not having to deal with the downsides.
And maybe it causes you to reflect that, in the US -- the very personal freedoms (i.e. lack of guilt on being disobedient or trying new things) leads to a society where it's more likely you're not getting your wallet back if you leave it somewhere...
There was a good blog post about a guy living in Japan.
Here he was in this clean and crime free place, but his bicycle kept getting trashed overnight. Just his bike parked in a sea of other bikes.
He thought it was because he was a foreigner, but finally after he reported it to the police numerous times someone explained the phrase "The nail that sticks out gets knocked down." and pointed out the bikes he was buying were from China.
His bike looked similar to everyone else's bike in the area, but it was made by a Chinese company and there had been news stories about how these bikes were faulty / dangerous / bad (the information apparently was somewhat questionable).
So he bought a proper Japanese bike that looked like the other bikes, and it never happened again.
The contrast of a clean and orderly society with very targeted pressure by random members of society not to do something like buy the wrong bike ... is quite striking.
This is a good assessment. I believe Japan generally only works for people that already fall in line with societal norms to some extent.
I do wish to believe that a personal freedom society and a society that takes your wallet don't have to be tightly coupled... Although I will say the public shame of Japan is stronger than the private shame of the US.
I remember there was a YouTube video making comparison between Japan and China. Of course Japan is much better in many obvious ways, and the comment sections also reflect most people prefer Japan over China.
Then I saw a Japanese commented when he was traveling in China he saw a lot of employees playing with their cellphones during working hours. He said he was all of a sudden really jealous of those people do that while in Japan he has to work all day long without much personal life.
This smells like a lot of post-hoc rationalization. Collectivism? What about China, which did terribly on this kind of test. Shintoism? Only 3-4% of the population follows that. See https://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-people-are-honest-los... where the graphic in the middle of the page compares countries. It appears that Scandinavian countries fare best followed by Eastern European. I would be happy to hear what people at HN think are the real reasons.
For what it's worth, as a scatterbrained person, I think it would be great living in a country with so much trust that I could expect my lost things not to be stolen.
I completely agree. Foreign culture analyses like this are always tinged with bias and an incurable desire to find little small-picture justifications. I'm sick and tired of seeing every random quirk of Japanese people being explained as "Shinto this, Buddhism that"; it's such an oversimplification. The interior lives of human beings are built upon perhaps 1,000,000 variables, not just 3 variables.
The writing is in English, published by someone who spent an entire life growing up in the West. And, as you mentioned, this "returning item phenomenon" seems not to be the case in modern China, even in the cities.
If you want to even begin to describe Eastern culture in English, maybe take a look at how hard it was, and still is, to articulate the internal world of the Russians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_soul
I was born in one of the "safe" East Asian countries and I think it all comes down to their sense of ownership in the community. Koreans and Japanese have this deeply ingrained idea that the entire history of their country has been built and run by their "people" and they will have a hivemind-allergic reaction to anything they see as undesirable. There's very little crime in public in these countries because people equate a crime that happens in some back alley of a major city to a crime that happens in your cousin's backyard. It's simply abhorrent.
Needless to say, this culture does have its drawbacks, but I think the key takeaway is to increase people's sense of ownership in our communities.
Homogenous, nationalistic, small country with high IQ, good education system, high GDP, low levels of immigration, and a culture that emphasizes community.
Oh, and lower levels of inequality, relatively, and a more aligned politics/media system that doesn’t foment distrust.
Clearly, it's a lasting side effect of the Meiji Restoration, because it's one of the few things I remember about Japanese history.
While that was a joke, that does seem to be how people pick these explanations. Everything about Japan seems to be explainable by social homogeneity, WW2, or philosophy/religion, which is just the set of facts foreigners tend to know about Japan.
I can't explain my own culture, and I've actually studied its history. I'm not even confident I can identify the differences it has with other cultures. We're often more similar than we think.
In China, it's very common to leave your property out of sight for minutes and it would be stolen. Collectivism isn't really associated to this topic at all.
Syncretic Shintoism/Buddhism is pervasive in Japan. It's absolutely not true that only 3-4% believe in it. The real figure is way higher. The issue is it's not a religion that you believe in in the same sense as, say, Christianity; there's a lot of disparate practices that most people adhere to at least some of.
Just walking around in Japanese cities, you see shrines everywhere. Way more than you see churches in US cities even (admittedly the typical shrine is a lot smaller).
I found this similar mentality in Korea where you can leave your laptop, phone, etc. at a cafe completely exposed on a table while you go to the restroom or even out to lunch. When you come back your stuff will still be there.
As I live in NYC, this completely blew my mind and I still felt that anxiety and awkwardness just leaving my stuff to go use the restroom. Near guaranteed theft in NYC lol.
---
And to add another story. A friend and I were traveling in Japan a few years ago. My friend had the lucky privilege of forgetting his backpack (with laptop, passport, all the not-fun-stuff to lose items) not once, but twice during the trip.
The first time, he forgot it on the train ride to Osaka (left it on the rack above the seats). The bag went all the way to the end of the line. 4 hour round trip to get it back, but we were super surprised.
Second time was the day we were to fly back. He left it on the train platform bench (!!!) for that non-stop ride to Narita. That feeling of dread when we started moving and he realized he had to wait at least an hour before he could contact anybody about it.
Long story short, he took the 1 hour train back and it was still sitting there. Missed the flight, but got everything back safely. Amazing.
When I was living in Japan, i once lost my wallet on a bicycle ride. It must have fallen out of my pocket somewhere on the route i was taking.
I didn't notice it was missing until I got home, got my keys out to open the door and realised the wallet was missing. I went back out on the bike and retraced my route but couldnt see the wallet annoyed that I would have to cancel cards, get a new ID card.
After I got home again, i was procrastinating about cancelling the cards for about 30mins and then decided to crack on. After I picked up the phone to start, the front door bell rang, I opened the door and there were 2 ladies with my wallet, they handed me my wallet, asked me to check everything was there and then apologized for taking so long to return my wallet.
Apparently they found my wallet, went to an address I had left in there, but I had recently moved apartments, so they went to the Koban, Police officer told them my address based off my ID card and then they came to my address.
It's not quite at the level of Japan, but Aftenposten, which is a newspaper in Norway, conducted a test [1] (translation [2]) in Oslo where they "lost" 20 wallets. 15 eventually returned.
Personally I've lost my wallet twice and it has been returned both times.
It is nice to be able to trust your fellow citisens somewhat :)
The abundance of "police boxes" in Japan, small satellite police stations, probably helps a lot.
While living in Japan, I found a lost wallet on the street, in the gutter. That wallet was sitting just down the street from the police. Line-of-sight. Picking up the wallet and taking it to the station was immediately obvious and convenient.
"Tamura describes the concept of 'hito no me'; the ‘societal eye’. Even without a police presence, no theft will occur while there is hito no me. But left in a place where there is no one watching, thefts do occur."
"Likewise, in Shintoism everything, from rocks to trees, possesses a spirit. While organised Shintoism is a minority practice in Japan, omniscient objects permeate the culture....if you are always being watched and your natural disposition is to think of others first, it is natural that you would be bothered to hand in the lost item."
The concept of "standing out" is a bit foreign in collectivist cultures like Japan, and getting blamed/shunned/etc for stealing would be mentally taxing.
That is how I analyzed it for the most part since there was such a wide variance between countries. Eastern Europe really stood out to me and I believe that may have to do with a generation of people that were used to the surveillance state of post-communist society.
In the US, the social impact generally means little, however the economic and time one matters a lot (via jail or fines). Post-communist states might be still conditioned to live in a culture where people are used to corrupt police that ENSURING you have nothing damning is far better than taking a risk and dealing with getting out of that.
> In a study comparing dropped phones and wallets in New York and Tokyo, 88% of phones “lost” by the researchers were handed into the police by Tokyo residents, compared to 6% of the ones “lost” in New York. Likewise, 80% of Tokyo wallets were handed in compared to 10% in New York.
My phone slipped out of my pocket on the subway on my last night in Tokyo. Realized 20 minutes later, talked to some employees and described what kind of phone it was (a cheap Samsung, really not a big deal), gone as can be. Flew back home to Miami.
Received my phone back in the mail a month later. A friend of mine there kept checking with the employees and it eventually showed up in lost and found. Refused to allow me to pay for the international shipping.
My first day in Japan I fell asleep on the train. I woke up to a train employee telling me to leave the train. I grabbed my bag and left in a daze, only to realize too late that I left my duffle bag on the top shelf. I reported it and was assured that it would be found. 2 weeks later they still hadn't found my bag but kindly told me that it must have been a Korean.
Um. Well, that was 20 years ago. I'm sure things are different now.
Two days ago I was on my regular running route and I saw a wallet on the ground. It had 5000 yen (around 50 USD) sticking out of it. The weather was a bit damp and it was far from a police box so I didn't want to risk getting randomly stopped and searched on my way to hand it in so I just put it on a fence post and went on my way.
I run the same route everyday, so when I ran the next day lo and behold, the wallet was still there, complete with 5000 yen note sticking out. I'm curious if it will still be there on today's run.
I think part of this is that a far greater proportion of "lost" valuables in Japan are _really_ lost than in other countries, street crime being pretty rare.
But still, that 6% figure for New York! Can it be true? Is it really normal to steal other people's shit if they leave it behind?
I can't speak to NYC but in SF you absolutely will lose your shit. I have had coworkers get their cars broken into midday after leaving their backpack unattended for an hour or so. Friends have had their backpacks yanked from between their legs on Bart as it entered a station. These are not situations where these items are just laying around, and they were still taken.
Coworkers have lost their laptops at bars or coffee shops because they got up for a few minutes. It could be that the value is so well established in this area; if you steal a backpack you are almost guaranteed to get a Macbook. IDK if that is similar in NY.
Just as an anecdote from a NYC resident, a couple years back I found a Japanese woman's wallet on a commuter bus. From the address I saw that the owner lived in my neighborhood so I went by her home after work to return it. Nobody was home so I left a little note with my phone number. She called me, and I met her the next day to return it to her. I considered our business concluded but about two months later she and her husband sent me a Christmas card with a gift card inside. I thanked them but sent the gift card back.
I have also lost my own wallet on multiple occasions when I was younger and more careless, and I would say it was returned maybe two out of five times. Not great, but not that bad either.
My wallet dropped out of my pocket in Manhattan. After maybe 10 minutes, somebody picked it up and proceeded to buy as many things with my cards until I cancelled them.
But still, that 6% figure for New York! Can it be true? Is it really normal to steal other people's shit if they leave it behind?
Who said anything about shit getting stolen? The article claims: 88% of phones “lost” by the researchers were handed into the police by Tokyo residents, compared to 6% of the ones “lost” in New York. (emphasis mine)
I found a wallet in NY once. The ID had the owner's address around the corner and I was able to drop it off to him. I found a phone once (I noticed it was ringing on an otherwise empty table) it was the phone's owner calling from her girlfriend's phone. I was able to hand it back to her myself. The cops really didn't need to get involved in either case and didn't. In another American city, I've left my phone in a cab and gotten it back without going through the police as well. Is a city a less trustful place if the cops aren't thought of as a lost & found?
Man, I was living in the UK. A kid on a skateboard dropped his phone, didn't notice. Less than a minute later, a guy (gardener or construction worker by the looks of it) picks it off the ground and gets in his van. Bye bye phone.
Another time, found a wallet and returned it, the woman said it's unbelievable, no one else would do that. Gave me 10 pounds, too, heh (there was way more in the wallet, plus cards and ID, it's how I found her). I'd be very happy if someone did that for me.
But yeah, usually "finders keepers" holds true :/
I like these kind of stories from Japan, makes it seem like people do respect each other. Shame not everything is that good over there.
Honest question:
Do folks feel warm fuzzies when they do something "good / +ve"? Frankly unless I went out of my way to do something significant, I don't feel anything. Asking as there might be some of that going on here.
For e.g., around Christmas here in SF, I was a at a shopping mall parking lot waiting for my wife to return. I noticed a man counting a few bills of cash. He counted and then turned to head to his car. As he turned he dropped a couple of bills. I just shouted out to him to bring it to my attention so he could get it. I don't feel anything about the incident and would be hard pressed to use it as a barometer of my character.
Anecdotal evidence here: Went to Japan, was out in a crowded area after dinner. A woman's wallet fell out of her pocket as she walked along. Literally a crowd of people rushed to pick it up and give it back to her. Never seen anything like that. One of many strange phenomena observed on the streets of Tokyo at night.
Yes, it is very impressive. I lost my prepaid card (Suica card? withou name or password stuff) with tens of thousands of Yen in Tokyo's Disneyland train in last year. After half an hour, a sweating Metro staff found it and returned to me.
The article attributes this characteristic with Buddhism and collectivism without much comparative evaluation, and I find the explanation utterly unconvincing. For if it is Buddhism and communalism that led to such societal behavior, why is it that its neighboring largely Buddhist and largely collectivist East Asian and South-East Asian neighbors don't exhibit such characteristics? A proper argument in terms of "cultural history" needs to account for comparative evidence.
Interestingly when I encounter this kind of sloppy "cultural history" reasoning it is from a BBC article.
Little-known tip: in the US, if you happen to find a lost wallet that contains an ID, you can just drop it in the nearest postbox and the USPS has the duty to attempt to return it to its rightful owner. Here's the relevant page of the postal code: https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/507.htm
[+] [-] jrsdav|6 years ago|reply
While doing a transfer on the Shinkansen in Hiroshima, I left my camera bag at a noodle kiosk on the platform (around $3k worth of equipment). Didn't realize it until 2 hours after getting on the next train.
When we arrived at our destination, I told my friend we were meeting (a Japanese native) what happened, and she reassured me that it would be right where I left it (said something about there being a "taboo" with the Japanese and touching other people's private property).
So we walked over to the JR attendant and explained what happened, and in no time at all she had the other station attendant on the line who confirmed they found my bag. Just as easy as that.
Then I proceeded to lose my wallet and passport in a taxi, which we recovered just as easily!
Japan is a great country to visit, if while abroad you displace the part of your brain that keeps track of things...
[+] [-] washadjeffmad|6 years ago|reply
I navigated to the small station on the lower platform where the attendants held her luggage and gave them her name. The younger one asked where my grandmother was and then gave me a regretful look when I said she was disabled and wouldn't be able to travel this far, because they could only release the bag to its owner.
An older attendant pulled him aside then stepped up and asked me what my name was. "I'm her grandson, Washadjeffmad. I reported the missing luggage.", I explained and held out my passport. Without looking at it, he sighed and stepped off again. When he reappeared, he asked me again where she was, and I told him- on her way to Kyoto. He closed his eyes, said something I didn't catch, and then asked "Are you sure she's not here?" Clearly she wasn't. It'd been a decade, but was my Japanese really so bad?
Another man emerged from the back to observe his two obviously frustrated coworkers, then pulled them back to talk. When they reappeared this time, the older man asked, "Are you Washadjeffmad's grandmother?" And it finally clicked.
"Yes. That's me."
And they immediately handed over my bag.
Japan is a funny place.
[+] [-] jyounker|6 years ago|reply
The pressure has to go somewhere.
[+] [-] harikb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wisty|6 years ago|reply
A society decides what's acceptable, and how far they're willing to go to uphold these expectations.
[+] [-] cookingrobot|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikorym|6 years ago|reply
This especially tends to happen if for example you were robbed and your wallet was left behind or let's say the police were harassing you and threw your driver's license over a fence or something (true story).
I think the reason for this is that the serial criminals are really <1% of the population and probably >50% are really just normal and usually decent people.
[+] [-] Zarel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hourislate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yibg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjwright|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m4rtink|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supernova87a|6 years ago|reply
The shame of being seen to be not honest or respecting people's property leads to amazing responsibility and kindness.
But it also leads to people being depressed and feeling constrained not to be able to break out of societal expectations.
The very things that make us love Japan, would make you go crazy to live there. So enjoy the privilege of being able to visit and experience the benefits, while not having to deal with the downsides.
And maybe it causes you to reflect that, in the US -- the very personal freedoms (i.e. lack of guilt on being disobedient or trying new things) leads to a society where it's more likely you're not getting your wallet back if you leave it somewhere...
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
Here he was in this clean and crime free place, but his bicycle kept getting trashed overnight. Just his bike parked in a sea of other bikes.
He thought it was because he was a foreigner, but finally after he reported it to the police numerous times someone explained the phrase "The nail that sticks out gets knocked down." and pointed out the bikes he was buying were from China.
His bike looked similar to everyone else's bike in the area, but it was made by a Chinese company and there had been news stories about how these bikes were faulty / dangerous / bad (the information apparently was somewhat questionable).
So he bought a proper Japanese bike that looked like the other bikes, and it never happened again.
The contrast of a clean and orderly society with very targeted pressure by random members of society not to do something like buy the wrong bike ... is quite striking.
[+] [-] generaljelly|6 years ago|reply
I do wish to believe that a personal freedom society and a society that takes your wallet don't have to be tightly coupled... Although I will say the public shame of Japan is stronger than the private shame of the US.
[+] [-] namelosw|6 years ago|reply
Then I saw a Japanese commented when he was traveling in China he saw a lot of employees playing with their cellphones during working hours. He said he was all of a sudden really jealous of those people do that while in Japan he has to work all day long without much personal life.
[+] [-] virtuous_signal|6 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, as a scatterbrained person, I think it would be great living in a country with so much trust that I could expect my lost things not to be stolen.
[+] [-] jdtang13|6 years ago|reply
The writing is in English, published by someone who spent an entire life growing up in the West. And, as you mentioned, this "returning item phenomenon" seems not to be the case in modern China, even in the cities.
If you want to even begin to describe Eastern culture in English, maybe take a look at how hard it was, and still is, to articulate the internal world of the Russians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_soul
[+] [-] simmanian|6 years ago|reply
Needless to say, this culture does have its drawbacks, but I think the key takeaway is to increase people's sense of ownership in our communities.
[+] [-] nwienert|6 years ago|reply
Oh, and lower levels of inequality, relatively, and a more aligned politics/media system that doesn’t foment distrust.
[+] [-] nitwit005|6 years ago|reply
While that was a joke, that does seem to be how people pick these explanations. Everything about Japan seems to be explainable by social homogeneity, WW2, or philosophy/religion, which is just the set of facts foreigners tend to know about Japan.
I can't explain my own culture, and I've actually studied its history. I'm not even confident I can identify the differences it has with other cultures. We're often more similar than we think.
[+] [-] factsaresacred|6 years ago|reply
Comparing China to Japan won't do any good as the cultural revolution decimated its social capital.
[+] [-] namelosw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CydeWeys|6 years ago|reply
Just walking around in Japanese cities, you see shrines everywhere. Way more than you see churches in US cities even (admittedly the typical shrine is a lot smaller).
[+] [-] ookblah|6 years ago|reply
As I live in NYC, this completely blew my mind and I still felt that anxiety and awkwardness just leaving my stuff to go use the restroom. Near guaranteed theft in NYC lol.
---
And to add another story. A friend and I were traveling in Japan a few years ago. My friend had the lucky privilege of forgetting his backpack (with laptop, passport, all the not-fun-stuff to lose items) not once, but twice during the trip.
The first time, he forgot it on the train ride to Osaka (left it on the rack above the seats). The bag went all the way to the end of the line. 4 hour round trip to get it back, but we were super surprised.
Second time was the day we were to fly back. He left it on the train platform bench (!!!) for that non-stop ride to Narita. That feeling of dread when we started moving and he realized he had to wait at least an hour before he could contact anybody about it.
Long story short, he took the 1 hour train back and it was still sitting there. Missed the flight, but got everything back safely. Amazing.
[+] [-] hoi|6 years ago|reply
I didn't notice it was missing until I got home, got my keys out to open the door and realised the wallet was missing. I went back out on the bike and retraced my route but couldnt see the wallet annoyed that I would have to cancel cards, get a new ID card.
After I got home again, i was procrastinating about cancelling the cards for about 30mins and then decided to crack on. After I picked up the phone to start, the front door bell rang, I opened the door and there were 2 ladies with my wallet, they handed me my wallet, asked me to check everything was there and then apologized for taking so long to return my wallet.
Apparently they found my wallet, went to an address I had left in there, but I had recently moved apartments, so they went to the Koban, Police officer told them my address based off my ID card and then they came to my address.
[+] [-] vearwhershuh|6 years ago|reply
By asking this question, you deny yourself access to its answer.
[+] [-] tyfon|6 years ago|reply
Personally I've lost my wallet twice and it has been returned both times.
It is nice to be able to trust your fellow citisens somewhat :)
[1] https://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/i/zlOb/slik-gikk-det-da-a...
[2] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
[+] [-] verisimilidude|6 years ago|reply
While living in Japan, I found a lost wallet on the street, in the gutter. That wallet was sitting just down the street from the police. Line-of-sight. Picking up the wallet and taking it to the station was immediately obvious and convenient.
[+] [-] viburnum|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlameKaneda|6 years ago|reply
"Likewise, in Shintoism everything, from rocks to trees, possesses a spirit. While organised Shintoism is a minority practice in Japan, omniscient objects permeate the culture....if you are always being watched and your natural disposition is to think of others first, it is natural that you would be bothered to hand in the lost item."
The concept of "standing out" is a bit foreign in collectivist cultures like Japan, and getting blamed/shunned/etc for stealing would be mentally taxing.
[+] [-] LeoTinnitus|6 years ago|reply
In the US, the social impact generally means little, however the economic and time one matters a lot (via jail or fines). Post-communist states might be still conditioned to live in a culture where people are used to corrupt police that ENSURING you have nothing damning is far better than taking a risk and dealing with getting out of that.
[+] [-] pzumk|6 years ago|reply
Wow!
[+] [-] NotASithLord|6 years ago|reply
Received my phone back in the mail a month later. A friend of mine there kept checking with the employees and it eventually showed up in lost and found. Refused to allow me to pay for the international shipping.
[+] [-] dr_dshiv|6 years ago|reply
Um. Well, that was 20 years ago. I'm sure things are different now.
[+] [-] laurieg|6 years ago|reply
Two days ago I was on my regular running route and I saw a wallet on the ground. It had 5000 yen (around 50 USD) sticking out of it. The weather was a bit damp and it was far from a police box so I didn't want to risk getting randomly stopped and searched on my way to hand it in so I just put it on a fence post and went on my way.
I run the same route everyday, so when I ran the next day lo and behold, the wallet was still there, complete with 5000 yen note sticking out. I'm curious if it will still be there on today's run.
[+] [-] sanitycheck|6 years ago|reply
But still, that 6% figure for New York! Can it be true? Is it really normal to steal other people's shit if they leave it behind?
[+] [-] JakeTheAndroid|6 years ago|reply
Coworkers have lost their laptops at bars or coffee shops because they got up for a few minutes. It could be that the value is so well established in this area; if you steal a backpack you are almost guaranteed to get a Macbook. IDK if that is similar in NY.
[+] [-] zuminator|6 years ago|reply
I have also lost my own wallet on multiple occasions when I was younger and more careless, and I would say it was returned maybe two out of five times. Not great, but not that bad either.
[+] [-] Aunche|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sct202|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dfxm12|6 years ago|reply
Who said anything about shit getting stolen? The article claims: 88% of phones “lost” by the researchers were handed into the police by Tokyo residents, compared to 6% of the ones “lost” in New York. (emphasis mine)
I found a wallet in NY once. The ID had the owner's address around the corner and I was able to drop it off to him. I found a phone once (I noticed it was ringing on an otherwise empty table) it was the phone's owner calling from her girlfriend's phone. I was able to hand it back to her myself. The cops really didn't need to get involved in either case and didn't. In another American city, I've left my phone in a cab and gotten it back without going through the police as well. Is a city a less trustful place if the cops aren't thought of as a lost & found?
[+] [-] jotm|6 years ago|reply
Another time, found a wallet and returned it, the woman said it's unbelievable, no one else would do that. Gave me 10 pounds, too, heh (there was way more in the wallet, plus cards and ID, it's how I found her). I'd be very happy if someone did that for me.
But yeah, usually "finders keepers" holds true :/
I like these kind of stories from Japan, makes it seem like people do respect each other. Shame not everything is that good over there.
[+] [-] haskellandchill|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zebnyc|6 years ago|reply
For e.g., around Christmas here in SF, I was a at a shopping mall parking lot waiting for my wife to return. I noticed a man counting a few bills of cash. He counted and then turned to head to his car. As he turned he dropped a couple of bills. I just shouted out to him to bring it to my attention so he could get it. I don't feel anything about the incident and would be hard pressed to use it as a barometer of my character.
[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enahs-sf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turingbook|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhanschoo|6 years ago|reply
Interestingly when I encounter this kind of sloppy "cultural history" reasoning it is from a BBC article.
[+] [-] kibwen|6 years ago|reply