Japanese with anime voice: episode4
Hello everyone. I’m Sachi.
Lately, I have been seeing articles and videos on Yahoo News and YouTube about people being surprised that lost and found items are returned in Japan. Indeed, I believe that most lost items are returned in Japan. However, be aware that when you drop your wallet, it may or may not come back with cash in it. I know several people who have dropped their wallets, and some of them came back empty, just the wallet. If it’s a phone or computer, it’s often reported to the station or the police. If it’s something other than a wallet, the odds are good that it will be returned.
I’m going to talk about someone in my life who frequently drops her purse. It is my partner’s mother. She drops her purse a lot anyway. When she came to our house a few years ago, she told us as soon as she arrived that she had dropped her purse. On the way to our house, she had stopped by the grocery store to buy some dishes for dinner, and she had left it there. So she went back to the grocery store with my partner to pick it up. It was many years ago, so I don’t remember the details well, but anyway, his mother was able to find the wallet safe and sound. And the contents of the wallet were intact. Thank goodness nothing was stolen, not the wallet, not the cash, not anything.
The three of us were having dinner and got to talking about my partner’s mother. He mentioned that his mother had dropped her purse many times before. But his mother denied it and said it was only a few times. By a few times, I mean two or three times, but from what she told me, she had apparently done it more than 10 times.
What’s amazing is that most of the time she dropped her purse, it came back with both the purse and contents intact. She told me that one time, when she dropped her purse, the money was stolen. She said that the wallet had a month’s worth of living expenses in it. Probably more than a hundred thousand yen. I don’t know the cost of living at the time, so I’m not sure. Still, how is it possible for someone to drop a wallet with that much money in it? Can you believe it? That’s what is so remarkable about my partner’s mother.
When I was in high school, I happened to pick up a wallet on the side of the road. At the time, I commuted to school by train and bicycle. I was riding my bike from school to the station when I noticed the wallet on the ground. I couldn’t imagine dropping the wallet in the middle of the street, so I was surprised when I found it. I picked up the wallet and checked inside and found a driver’s license, but that was not enough to confirm any contact information. I then found a business card that looked like the wallet’s owner. On the spot, I called the company on the business card and explained the circumstances of picking up the wallet. It was an age when people already had cell phones, so a cell phone was very convenient in such a situation. A few minutes later, the owner of the wallet came to pick it up and I was able to give it to her safely. She gave me a piece of chiffon cake to thank me, but for my part, I was more relieved that the wallet had been returned to her safely.
However, a friend who was with me at the time complimented me and said that if she had found the purse, she would not have returned it to its owner. Well, I think she was joking. In my heart, I was glad that my friend did not find the wallet. LOL
This is a pet theory, but stealing from others does not make you happy. I believe that if you steal from others, someday someone will surely steal something from you as well. I think that many people in Japan think the same way as I do about the safe return of lost property. Maybe. Well, I have no way of knowing what other people think.
However, there are people like my friend who think bad things, so please don’t think that if you lose something in Japan, it will definitely come back to you. Do not be reassured.
