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lost and found

10 million yen in cash found garbage, now belongs to city of Sapporo

The city plans to reuse instead of recycle.

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How to stop thieves using your cash cards when you lose your wallet

Simple hack from a former bank clerk in Japan.

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Japanese Twitter searches for foreigners who left funny photos on lost smartphone at Costco

Phone returned to owner with a surprise on the camera roll from a trio of good samaritans.

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Lost something on a Japanese train? Look for it at the railway’s lost-and-found market

Unclaimed items from the lost-and-found are sold to the public at these special markets.

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Japanese subway line sells a piece of guitar history worth thousands for only five bucks

This unassuming little silver box is worth its weight in gold.

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Wakayama cop loses fully-loaded automatic handgun on the street while guarding PM

We all have our bad days at work, some worse than others.

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The weird and wonderful things people leave behind on Japanese trains

Japan Rail has just released a list of the most rare and frequently lost items found on their trains, and when they’re most likely to find them.

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Honest Tokyo: 3.3 billion yen of lost cash handed in to police in 2014 alone

Imagine this. You’re at a fireworks festival with almost one million people in attendance. Everyone is scrambling for a place to sit and stampeding for the exit when it’s over. In between standing in line for a tasty treat and being dazzled by the fireworks spectacle, you realize something terrible. You’ve lost your wallet. Now what?

In Japan, you just go to the nearest police box, or koban! In 2014 alone, a stunning amount of cash and lost possessions was turned into police stations around Tokyo. In cash alone, over 3.3 billion yen was turned in. That’s a whopping US$27.8 million picked up and taken to the authorities. Could that happen anywhere else in the world?

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Things left behind on Japanese trains: A sad photographic collection to make you wonder

From the super-efficient bullet train cleaning team that whizzes in and out in a seven-minute turnaround, to stories of entertainingly brilliant station customer service, there are heaps of things to love about Japan’s rail system, which ranks amongst the cleanest and most punctual in the world.

One other cool thing about Japanese trains – or perhaps about Japanese society in general – is that if you lose something, you stand a pretty good chance of getting it back again. Even valuable items like smartphones or wallets often end up handed in to lost property and returned to their original owner.

Today, though, we bring you a collection of some of the more unusual items left on trains around Japan – things that made other commuters go “Huh? Why’d someone have that on the train anyway?”

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The heartwarming, true story about a disaster-stricken man being reunited with his long lost Harley Davidson has made the rounds on the Internet and tugged at the heartstrings of Japanese Internet users in particular.

“They’ve started writing the movie already,” posted one enthusiastic reader on the Topsy.com comments section.

Man loses three family members and nearly all of his possessions in a horrific earthquake and tsunami and spends over a year in temporary housing before hearing one day that someone found his treasured motorcycle 4,000 miles across the ocean, reasonably intact considering the beating it took at the hands of the Pacific Ocean?  We may have something here, Mr. DeMille. Read More