Lost $ (always) Found

Wasuremono: the Japanese culture of forgotten possessions

After spending a total of almost 9 months in Japan, I’ve managed to misplace only a handful of items. This is pretty impressive for me as I am a recovering scatterbrain! I will be transparent though and say that my record has not been completely clean. However, I have found every single item I have ever “lost” in public.

Japan is ranked second internationally for safety, behind Singapore, and let’s please keep in mind that Japan has a population that is 525 times larger than that of Singapore and constitutes a landmass that is 52,447% of Singapore’s square kilometers. So, I’m sure Japan was dubbed second due merely to this drastic imbalance of per capita statistics.

Japanese society is very, very safe. This applies to how people drive slowly and mindfully on the roads, the ability for children to be unattended by their caregivers in public starting as young as 5 years old and the non-existent access to firearms and almost all other weapons. This also applies to the lack of theft, robbery and pickpocketing. 

In the Japanese language there is a word “wasuremono” which is a combination of the verb “wasuru” meaning “to forget” and the noun “mono” meaning “things/stuff”. Wasuremono is the Japanese concept of “forgotten possessions”. This is a word I hear all the time. It’s part of the recorded message that’s played on the train before arriving at the next station to warn you not to forget anything and it’s said at the end of a movie in the theater, after leaving your table at a restaurant, and at the end of the school day or class time for students.  

Below is a picture that I took last weekend at our local laundromat (or “coin laundry” as they are called here). This box says “wasuremono” in Japanese characters and after peaking inside I saw that it contained a single Snoopy sock, a necktie, some small hand towels, and a ring with two keys attached. 

Most places have a “wasuremono” box. At grocery stores it's behind the help desk and at restaurants it's under the counter where the waiters stand. All forgotten possessions are promptly placed there in hopes of being returned to their original owner. 

So yes, I once left my bag at a restaurant and realized it about 15 minutes after leaving. I spoke to the employee at the door, who produced it quickly and was happy that I had been so prompt. But what happens when you lose something in a public space? Sure, in a restaurant or grocery store or even laundromat there is some structure, but what if you’re at the park, at the train station, or on the side of the street?

The Blue Thunders, the American football team that my partner and I are associated with here, is very diligent about wasuremono. At the final huddle of each game/practice, one of the staff members makes an announcement not to forget any items, and only then do we do the closing cheer. Inevitably, Dymond’s teammates do still forget some of their belongings, and these are always neatly photographed then collected by the team’s manager and posted in the group chat until they are all claimed and then eventually returned to their rightful owners at the following practice. The manager carries these items to each practice in a large canvas bag, and, to be honest, there’s a chevron-striped towel with oranges, browns and variations of these fiery earthy tones that I’ve seen in there for at least a month. Still searching for the owner and secretly wishing it was me!

I mean c’mon, how stunning is this towel?!

Although we live in a very small, quaint, quiet town called Ichikawa (meaning “one river”) we occasionally journey into the city center of Tokyo for errands and entertainment. It takes us about an hour o the train. One of the main reasons we go into the hustle and bustle is to visit one of the two American football stores in the entire country. Before the season we took a trip to gather the accessories and gear that Dymond was still needing for the first game. We had purchased over 20,000 yen (about $150 USD) worth of football equipment and headed home with our shopping bag in tow. After using the bathroom at one of the largest train stations in Tokyo we mindlessly hopped on the line that would take us back to our side of the map. It took us barely a minute to sit down on the train and look around and realize the bag had been left in the bathroom at the previous station! We got off at the upcoming stop, switched tracks and boarded the train heading in the opposite direction, finally arriving at the original bathroom after about 25 minutes of panicking. Hurrying back, we found the bag sitting right where it had been left. Untouched. Waiting for its rightful owner! 

In the big city of Tokyo, I’ve dropped a few items while bumping into strangers in the scramble of train transfers, store aisles and cross walks. I once dropped my train card in a Don Quixote (if you read my blog about that chaotic store then you have some idea of the colorful, noisy zoo in which this moment took place) and had it handed back to me by a complete stranger who had to chase me about 25 feet down an aisle. In the Shibuya train station, I dropped multiple coins out of my change purse (on coin here can be worth up to $3.50 USD, far more than a US quarter) and also had those promptly returned to me by a concerned passerby.

Back in our small town, there’s a narrow road that runs behind our home and winds along the train tracks ending at a local park. One side of the road is lined with vibrant greenery climbing high, and the other side alternates between two-story apartment buildings and town houses. I walk this path almost daily and am always pleasantly delighted to see the display of forgotten items. I’ve seen a small children’s toy set aside on the curb of the sidewalk, waiting patiently to find its home again. I’ve noticed a lacey cream colored shawl hanging on the fence of an apartment complex, hoping to be reunited with its owner. I’ve seen a patterned scarf neatly folded and set aside on a fence post, looking to be given back to whom it belongs to. All of these were displayed in the communal “lost and found,” that is, the public street. 

Outside of the convenience store on the corner of our block is a rack filled to the brim with left-behind umbrellas. All stores have umbrella stands outside of them with long slotted holes to place your umbrella in before entering. It seems that many have left in a rush without grabbing theirs, which is understandable since the Japanese rain comes suddenly and can instantly disappear. All of these umbrellas are almost identical. I wonder how many of them are ever claimed. 

Now, I’ve saved the most impressive story for last. This is not meant to be taken as advice but simply a testament to what is possible in a society that has a strict concept of returning the forgotten item to its rightful owner. 

A few weeks ago Dymond and I went to the park to train as we normally do once a week. We take the bus and then walk a few blocks to a luscious open field; we exercise for a few hours and then normally grab a snack and return home on the bus. This time, I was in charge of grabbing the snack since Dymond felt he was too sweaty and stinky to go in the store. I picked out two small bento boxes and paid using Dymond’s wallet. When I left the store and reunited with him outside, he told me that the bus would be coming soon so we needed to quickly head to the bus stop. I threw the food and wallet in my bag, and we proceeded to the stop across the street. Now, a little note about the buses here - they are fairly inconsistent. I know that’s surprising since the trains are so prompt it’s almost terrifying, but the buses, being subject to street traffic, arrive sporadically. Our bus was a few minutes late, and so we nibbled on a few bites of our bento boxes until the bus suddenly appeared at the intersection. Hurriedly I returned all the food to my bag, and we scanned our cards to enter the bus (along with our two large duffel bags with the throwing net, cleats, tarp, shade tent and 5 liters of water that we lug to the park each time). After we got settled on the bus, I handed Dymond back his wallet. He looked confused, turned it upside down and shook it, and to both of our shock it was completely empty. Not only were we missing his Japanese bank card but his US credit cards AND his Japanese residence card, which is his entire identification and permission to live and work here. Obviously, this was deeply disappointing and fear-inducing. Since we were already stuck on the bus, we rode it all the way home. We dragged our luggage up the stairs to our apartment and immediately checked the bus schedule for the next bus heading in the opposite direction. It wasn’t coming for another 20 minutes so we decided to eat our bento boxes and at least head out with full stomachs and slightly less sweat on us. 

First we checked the grocery store, naturally. The man behind the counter checked the wasuremono section and produced a large black wallet which unfortunately was not what we were looking for. 

Then we retraced our steps all the way from the store to the bus stop. Eyes glued to the ground and pretending not to consider the reality that Japan has very large drain holes (due to the frequency of heavy rain) and the cards could easily be sailing down an underground stream. 

Finally we arrived back at the bus stop. I checked the cement and sidewalk surrounding the bus stop and saw nothing out of the ordinary. THEN I noticed a small pile of what looked like paper sitting on the raised cement wall against the side of the bus stop. As I got closer I saw the same sight that I will show you below: all of Dymond’s valuable cards stacked neatly in a row sitting in plain sight where they could easily be returned to their owner. 

I am very grateful to live somewhere so safe.

And yes, I’m still striving to minimize my lost possessions!