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Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

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Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#181

Post by BurningFrog »

kenhwang wrote: post #129
jyounker wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the Japanese are inveterate umbrella thieves. So much so that you will find locking umbrella racks in many buildings. The pressure has to go somewhere.

They're pretty much communal when I visited Tokyo/Kyoto. Pretty much always left the building with a different umbrella than I entered with. Just about everyone uses the same $5-10 black/gray/white/clear umbrella. They all go into the umbrella bucket when you enter a building. Everyone just grabs one on their way out that's close enough to the same as the one the dropped in. Sometimes you leave a building and it's no…

Note that for this to work, people have to only take the umbrella you need. Not grab all of them and sell.

BTW: I'm really glad to hear this, because I've been having some regrets about grabbing random umbrellas in Tokyo, because everyone seemed to do it. Glad I did it right after all!

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#182

Post by [deleted] »

NalNezumi wrote: post #169
nwienert wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Homogenous, nationalistic, small country with high IQ, good education system, high GDP, low levels of immigration, and a culture that emphasizes community. I've lived in a Scandinavian country with similar quantities most of my life (well except low levels of immigration) but I can't recall a single time lost property came back, even at a local small town bakery. The experience is very different from my life living…

[deleted]

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#183

Post by washadjeffmad »

jrsdav wrote: post #5

I experienced this while visiting Japan. 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 s…

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.

"Yes. That's me."

And they immediately handed over my bag.

Japan is a funny place.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#184

Post by technotony »

hutzlibu wrote: post #165
hocuspocus wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Japan and many other parts of East Asia, it rains most during the hottest months of summer. You don't wear jackets when it's 30+ °C and humid outside. But after living in the region for many years, I agree people also tend to be a bit irrationally afraid of the rain.

Ah, but I suppose there are areas with bigger fears of rain. I was hitchhiking through spain and someone who picked me up was a wine farmer, who told stories of people not coming to work, because that day it was raining - in a different village.

I've had people cancel meetings with me in San Francisco 'because it was raining'. To be fair the roads here do become significantly more stressful then, but whenever it happens it feels ridiculous. My theory is that whatever the worst 1-2% of weather days per year becomes a weather excuse anywhere in the world. In the Phillipines it had to be bad typhoon, not just a normal one. In London it was moderate snowfall (that wouldn't cause a dent in switzerland for instance).

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#185

Post by ekianjo »

jyounker wrote: post #84
jrsdav wrote: post #5

I experienced this while visiting Japan. 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 s…

On the other hand, the Japanese are inveterate umbrella thieves. So much so that you will find locking umbrella racks in many buildings. The pressure has to go somewhere.

Umbrellas are super cheap and readily available when you need one though.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#186

Post by remarkEon »

m4rtink wrote: post #173
CydeWeys wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

BTW, the japanese Shinto shrines and Budhist temples just seem so much more alive and part of the community, than western churches, which often seem like almost foreign and disconnected from actual current society.

Part of this, imo, has to do with the architecture and it will really depend on the city (speaking from a US perspective) you're in. If you're in Philadelphia or an older city on the East Coast some of the old Catholic or Episcopalian Churches/Cathedrals do feel like they're integrated into the community because they were built around the same time as the rest of the buildings and housing. In the midwest this trend kind of wanes, as many of the Catholic Churches were built after Vatican II and ... don't have the same kind of aesthetic, to put it mildly, and weren't necessarily built the same time other housing was built. By the time you get to the West Coast you'll start finding examples again that feel like they belong there, like Spanish Missions. So it's mostly age and the timeframe in which everything was built.

All that said, I've greatly enjoyed my trips to Japan and feel the same way about their Shrines.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#187

Post by ekianjo »

irrational wrote: post #107
Reedx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article hits on this, suggesting that they are viewed as communal property since they're so abundant, cheap and frequently forgotten. Umbrellas are also an on demand item, so can see how this could evolve as a sort of community solution to the rain problem.

What is the rain problem? I live in the Pacific Northwest where it rains for 9 months out of the year. Our solution is to not use umbrellas at all. Everyone has a waterproof rain jacket.

In Japan blue skies is the norm though. No clouds most of the time.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#188

Post by dragonsngoblins »

supernova87a wrote: post #64
lawn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there a story a while ago how a Japanese school essentially forced (or put a lot of pressure) a schoolgirl to dye her hair to fit in with the other girls, but it failed over and over until she got burns on her head?

Another regarding gender expectations is the recent news that a (maybe more than 1?) Japanese medical school's admissions staff were rigging standardized test scores to disfavor women applicants. This is because they were seen as less reliable / career-oriented or productive (or whatever justification) for not favoring them to receive the education that men deserve. Expectations.

This wasn't a case of gender discrimination. It wasn't a requirement that girls have black hair specifically, but that students do. The issue is the assumption that black == natural, which for people who aren't ethnically Japanese may not be the case

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#189

Post by progman32 »

jotm wrote: post #22
sanitycheck wrote: post #6

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?

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, i…

What would a better response be to a dropped phone? From the story as told the guy may well have tried to find the phone's owner when he got a free minute.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#190

Post by numpad0 »

rtpg wrote: post #171
novok wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy them everywhere for 300-1000 yen, those models are the ones that everyone uses so it isn't much of a sacrifice for everyone to buy another umbrella a few times a year.

an even more basic answer is that these super cheap umbrellas that everyone buys all look kinda the same, so it's hard to track your own umbrella unless you put some sort of sticker on it. So it's not even necessarily a concious system, just the end result of easily being confused between umbrellas.

Yeah, everyone has a moment when they notice a wrong umbrella in their hand. Could happen immediately upon pickup or could happen later.

From there your view branches into the direction of either communal property idea or an internal shame/rage/regrets. So far I consider mine a personal property.

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