Tokyo cops take care of shed umbrellas, tricks, flying squirrels

Lost your umbrella, tricks, or possibly a flying squirrel? In Tokyo, the cops are probably taking precise treatment of it.

In Japan, shed products are seldom separated from their proprietors for long, also in a huge city like Tokyo– populace 14 million.

“Foreign visitors are often surprised to get their things back,” stated Hiroshi Fujii, a 67-year-old tourist guide, defining Tokyo’s huge cops lost-and-found centre.

“But in Japan, there’s always an expectation that we will.”

It’s a “national trait” to report products discovered in public locations in Japan, he informed AFP. “We pass down this custom of reporting things we picked up, from parents to children.”

Around 80 personnel at the cops centre in Tokyo’s main Iidabashi area guarantee products are well arranged making use of a data source system, its supervisor Harumi Shoji informed AFP.

Everything is marked and arranged to accelerate a go back to its rightful proprietor.

ID cards and driving permits are most often shed, Shoji stated.

– Flying squirrels, iguanas –

But pets, pet cats and also flying squirrels and iguanas have actually been left at police headquarters, where policemans care for them “with great sensitivity”– speaking with publications, on-line short articles and veterinarians for guidance.

More than 4 million products were handed in to Tokyo Metropolitan Police in 2014, with around 70 percent of prized possessions such as purses, phones and essential papers efficiently rejoined with their proprietors.

“Even if it’s just a key, we enter details such as the mascot keychain it’s attached to,” Shoji stated in a space loaded with items, consisting of a huge Cookie Monster packed plaything.

Over the training course of one mid-day, loads of individuals involved accumulate or look for their shed residential property at the centre, which obtains products entrusted train terminal personnel or at little neighborhood police headquarters throughout Tokyo if they are not asserted within 2 weeks.

“The first thing we think is that people who lost their items must be in trouble so I think it’s normal for us that we report it to police,” Shoji stated.

If nobody shows up at the cops center within 3 months, the undesirable product is offered or thrown out.

The variety of shed products managed by the centre is enhancing as Japan invites a document increase of vacationers post-pandemic, and as devices diminish, Shoji stated.

Wireless earphones and hand-held followers are a progressively regular view at the lost-and-found centre, which has actually been running considering that the 1950s.

But a monstrous 200 square metres (2,100 square feet) is committed to shed umbrellas– 300,000 of which were generated in 2014, with just 3,700 of them returned, Shoji stated.

“We have a designated floor for umbrellas… during the rainy season, there are so many umbrellas that the umbrella trolley is overflowing and we have to store them in two tiers.”

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