Too Honest
Japanese citizens have such high standards of personal honesty that it has resulted in the country virtually drowning in an ocean of ownerless goods.
Because of extremely strict laws regarding the handing in of lost property, Japan's police stations and lost property centers are overflowing with millions of items with some of these items being opened packets of gum, live hamsters and TRILLIONS of yen in cash. TRILLIONS...
Japan's cabinet has recently approved legislations to reduce the time property is kept, and to change the regulation that defines pets as lost property in a bid to reduce the quantity of goods that are being handed in by people that will, in all likelihood, probably never reach their owners.
Anywhere else the gum would be eaten, the hamsters tortured and the money kept.
Posted By: Lint | 01:54 PM | Lint
Comments
Yep, ain't that the truth. If it was North America, the lost and found dept. would be emptied of everything but the junk. And I wonder if all that pot is truly burned when it's seized in a bust!
Posted by: canuckistani | June 22, 2006 03:27 AM
Sound like the flea markets in the states, except that the items are sold.
Posted by: matt | June 22, 2006 09:24 AM
last summer i went from nyc (where not claimed for a milisecond=yours) to tokyo where items would sit on the subway trains with no one so much as breathing on them until carted to lost and found. i also discovered that there's no such thing as no. just different ways of saying yes.
Posted by: sally | June 23, 2006 03:49 PM
Trillions in lost yen? No wonder they are all living in clay houses and eating rice out of bento boxes. They've lost all their spending money!
Posted by: The Corporal | June 24, 2006 04:00 PM