Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#251

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #250

dreamcompiler wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise DUI in Japan. Japan is much more strict than the US. One beer before driving and you become a guest of the state for 3 years. Just don't do it.

In Japanese cities, you don't need to drive if you're drunk, and you don't even need a car at all. Just get on the train/subway, or hail a taxi, or even walk. Drunk driving is a problem in the US because you can't get home without a car except for a handful of dense cities (Manhattan, etc.). The rise of Uber/Lyft is helping this, though.

Completely agree if you're in the cities. I spent a lot of time in Okinawa and other remote areas of Japan last month, and a car is very necessary there.

(NB driving in Japan is like driving in England except the turn signal is on the right side of the steering column, so I was constantly engaging my wipers when I wanted to turn. The locals call this "the Okinawa wave".)

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#252

Post by magduf » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #81

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.

> a more aligned politics/media system that doesn’t foment distrust. Japan is essentially a right-wing, one-party “democracy” put in place by US intelligence services, postwar. The current prime minister is literally the grandson of a CIA-backed war criminal, who was famously known as the “Devil of the Showa Period”: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobus…

>I speak Japanese, have spent a lot of time in the country, and have a great admiration for its people, but about the last thing I’d express any admiration for are its politics and media.

While the media might not be great, at least the politicians, right-wing as they may be, actually seem to be trying to do things to improve the country, and even pushing some relatively progressive ideas (for instance, they're pushing for more women in corporate leadership positions, something Japan is woefully behind on). I just can't say the same for America these days; our national government (and especially the executive branch) is moving things backwards and making things worse.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#253

Post by P_I_Staker » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #250

dreamcompiler wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise DUI in Japan. Japan is much more strict than the US. One beer before driving and you become a guest of the state for 3 years. Just don't do it.

In Japanese cities, you don't need to drive if you're drunk, and you don't even need a car at all. Just get on the train/subway, or hail a taxi, or even walk. Drunk driving is a problem in the US because you can't get home without a car except for a handful of dense cities (Manhattan, etc.). The rise of Uber/Lyft is helping this, though.

Yup, Uber helps a little bit, but unless you're in the heart of the city, it can easily become very unaffordable. Like $80 per night. If you like to have a vibrant social life, even wealthy people can't afford it. That's not even touching US driving culture.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#254

Post by magduf » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

jborichevskiy wrote: post #151

asdff wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd pipe up if someone asked me to watch a laptop and another person made a move on it. In a crowded store full of witnesses, that's all it would take to deter a thief.

Fair point. Especially given such a crime would be pretty opportunistic. That being said, this does remind me of the stunts pulled to get Ross Ulbricht's laptop: > To prevent Ulbricht from encrypting or deleting files on the laptop he was using to run the site as he was arrested, two agents pretended to be quarreling lovers. When they had sufficiently distracted him,[30] according to Joshuah Bearman of Wired, a third…

Wow, this guy got a double life sentence plus 40 years for "money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics"? He could have gotten a lighter sentence if he had carried out a mass shooting.

And how did the flash drive trick work? Was he running Windows on that laptop? Very bad idea.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#255

Post by magduf » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

viburnum wrote: post #147

verisimilidude wrote: post #46

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.

I love the police boxes. When I was in Japan the officers helped me a lot with directions and reading maps.

That's totally different from America, where police will get pissed and yell at you to get lost if you ask them for directions. (Speaking from personal experience)

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#256

Post by magduf » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 6:27 PM UTC

zuminator wrote: post #155

TomMarius wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the address I saw that the owner lived in my neighborhood Probably went on his foot

Since they sent me a Xmas card, I reciprocated in kind, also enclosing the gift card with a note apologizing but asking that they give it to a needy person at their church during the holiday season. (They had also sent me an invitation to attend services.) So no additional postage needed.

If they attend a church, they are really odd for Japanese, since almost no Japanese are Christian (at least in Japan).

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#257

Post by sholnay » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

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…

While I was in Tokyo a couple months ago, I put my common black/clear umbrella in the ramen shop rack. Upon exit, I was forced to grab another as mine had been nabbed. I felt horrible grabbing someone else's umbrella (though I still did haha)! I feel relieved to learn this is ok.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#258

Post by kyuudou » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

tyfon wrote: post #34

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 :) [1] https://www.aftenposten.no/okonomi/i/zlOb/slik-gikk-det-da-a... [2] https://translate.goog…

Another study was done with multiple countries and 17,000 wallets with some interesting results

https://www.boredpanda.com/social-experiment-lost-found-wall...

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#259

Post by kyuudou » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

dba7dba wrote: post #130

dr_dshiv wrote: post #118

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…

I loled at that `must have been a Korean` comment. History of Koreans in Japan has a complicated story. But basically ethnic Koreans are treated as a second class citizen in Japan. A Korean-American friend told me this story. He worked with a Britain/Ireland born coworker who was working in US at the time. Blond, European. He traveled fair bit to Japan. He knew this guy was Korean-American and in a conversation he as…

This might give you some perspective. I befriended and later dated a Korean whose parents were both Korean but even though she was born in Japan, since her parents never became citizens, she was still considered an alien. So, even though she was raised in Japan and spoke fluent Japanese (as well as English) and was for all intents and purposes as Japanese as anyone in Japan, she had to go back to Japan every couple years to renew her... resident visa.

It might be a while until such attitudes go away. From what I can tell the feeling isn't very mutual on the Korean side, either.

Re: Why Japan is so successful at returning lost property

#260

Post by claudeganon » Thu, Jan 16, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #252

claudeganon wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a more aligned politics/media system that doesn’t foment distrust. Japan is essentially a right-wing, one-party “democracy” put in place by US intelligence services, postwar. The current prime minister is literally the grandson of a CIA-backed war criminal, who was famously known as the “Devil of the Showa Period”: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobus…

>I speak Japanese, have spent a lot of time in the country, and have a great admiration for its people, but about the last thing I’d express any admiration for are its politics and media. While the media might not be great, at least the politicians, right-wing as they may be, actually seem to be trying to do things to improve the country, and even pushing some relatively progressive ideas (for instance, they're pushi…

Abe has a good PR team pushing this narrative abroad, but it doesn’t map to the material reality of most women. While female labor force participation rates are up, most women are locked into lower-level positions with bad wages and little hope of advancement.

Likewise, women still face a level of misogyny in Japan that is truly unimaginable to most Americans. This has been led in no small part by Abe and the LDP, who insist on the enforcement of absolutely regressive social mores. Most recently, they vehemently opposed women being allowed to keep their own last names upon marriage.