What I don't have anymore
‘Excuse me, I seem to have lost something,‘ I said gaining the attention of a station attendant standing next to a ticket window. ‘Just a few minutes ago my iPod fell from my pocket and I was wondering if someone stopped by here and dropped it off.’ Kyoto station at 8am in the morning recovering from a bad night of sleep, a fight with my girlfriend and the beginnings of a cold on my way to work, I knew it wasn’t going to be a good day.
She stared at me for just a moment, leaned through the ticket window and began to confer with a coworker. A feeling of hope began to slowly make its way up from my stomach to the corners of my mouth, maybe someone had seen it on the ground and handed it to this attendant as they exited the station, just maybe.
As she rummaged on the other side of the window just out of sight I began to smile but just then as things were looking good I was hit hard in the face with the Japanese procedural mindset.
Her hand came out with a sheet of paper. ‘The lost and found office can be found using this map’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Please inquire there about your lost item.’ ‘But it was only a minute ago and this is the closest window…’ I pleaded. ‘Can’t you just check?’
She gave me a puzzled look as if the words coming out of my mouth were in a different language, perhaps English. ‘I’m sorry but please go to the office on the map and ask about your lost item.’
Getting to the office was an adventure in itself. Upon trying to leave the gates on the lower floor via the manned gate(and thus avoiding a 120yen cost to come back in) the grim looking man behind the window gave me the third degree.
‘Why exactly do you have to leave the station without using your ticket?’ he said with serious eyes. ‘I just lost something a few minutes ago and need to go to the lost and found office to report it’ I said showing him the map from the other attendant. He looked me up and down. Once, twice, three times. Then he looked at the paper and studied it for a moment.
‘Okay’ he said begrudgingly putting his hanko (seal) on the ticket as well as signing it. He gave me one more hard look but I brushed it off as I went in search of the office.
It took me a while but I finally found it. The lost and found office was a single door hidden down a side street next to a hotel only noticeable because of small sign that said ‘lost and found.’ Total time from first inquiry to office, twelve minutes. Inside was a small office with an old straight faced man sitting behind a receptionist-like desk. To one side sat a younger man who was concentrating on his phone conversation. It was very, very, quiet.
‘Yes,’ the employee said to me looking away from his computer. ‘Excuse me but just a few minutes ago my iPod fell from my pocket I was wondering…’ ‘What color was it’ he said cutting me off in mid sentence. ‘Errr, silver and black’ I answered just a little bit shocked. ‘Where did you lose it.’ ‘On the staircase next to the Nara line’ I stuttered.
‘One moment.’ He picked up his phone and dialed a number. ‘….we have someone here who lost an iPod, do you have anything at your booth? No, okay.’ He dialed another number. ‘….yeah, we have someone here who lost an iPod. What? No? Okay.’
‘I am very sorry but no one has left an iPod’ he said in a deadpan voice eyes searching for something. His hand reached out and picked up a pad of paper. ‘Please fill this out with information about your lost item.’ He turned back to his computer.
I took a moment to fill out the paper. Name, description of lost item, phone number. I struggled to drag his attention away from the computer. ‘Is this enough.’ He glanced at the paper, ‘Yes. If anything comes in we will contact you, if not…’
It was only when I exited the office that it dawned on me. The phone calls he had made had been to the two ticket windows I had been to. Instead of just checking when I asked they had waited for a phone call from this office. I had walked back and forth across the station and was now late for work (not to mention not having my iPod) just to satisfy the procedure that lost and found inquiries must come from the lost and found office.
Thirty seconds of checking and asking turned into thirty minutes of rigmarole. In the time the first attendant had spent searching for a map to the lost and found office they could have asked and found out.
Only in Japan.
