Don’t worry about losing any cash in Japan even if you drop a wallet.

Though I don’t have much experience before, “lost items” and “forgotten items” should be one of the most embarrassing troubles in your life. For example, if you drop a wallet, or smartphone nowadays, you must be really in trouble because they connect directly with your daily life!

This is a story about such lost items today.

According to the article written by Okinawa Times, the cash brought to Okinawa Prefectural Police as a lost item in Okinawa Prefecture in 2018 was 203,702,934 yen (about US$1,843,307.00), and its 70% of 138,283,658 yen (about US$1,251,300.00) were returned to the owner. Also it says the average return rate over the past 5 years is about 66%!

It’s not only wallets, but also cash with a bank envelope, salary bags, and sometimes just 10 yen coin brought by an elementary school student for example.

FYI, the period the police keep as a lost-and-found item is 3 months based on the Lost Good Act, and if the owner is not found during the period, the ownership will be transferred to the person who brought it. If the person doesn’t accept the ownership for some reason, the cash would be revenue of the local government.

In case of wallets, relatively often to be returned because many of them have a driver’s license card or health insurance card in it, however, in case of only cash, it’s really difficult to identify the owner.

Other than cash, goods are also difficult to identify because some owners just give up and don’t report to the police. The average return rate of the goods over the past 5 years is about 36.4%. It’s about half as much as cash, but it’s still surprisingly big number.

I live in Tokyo by the way, my child dropped one of his gloves the other day and reported to the police, but it wasn’t found at that time.

Source: Okinawa Times