Japanese honesty
On Monday, December 6, 2021 I visited the local Post Office in my neighborhood to mail a print copy of my Piper Paper to Canada. I send most of my Piper Papers as e-mail attachments, but I have one friend in Elora, Ontario who has no computer. So, I mail him a print copy each month, early in the month, usually during the first week. Sometimes, I have a longer and heavier Piper Paper which costs more money, but the regular Piper Paper costs ¥260 to post. The female clerks at the local Post Office recognize me because I’m so regular - predictably once a month. I suppose I might be the only foreigner, or the only Caucasian foreigner who comes by.
On Monday 6th, I walked up to the counter and got a clerk who had previously served me. I didn’t recognize her, but she recognized me. She immediately started speaking about something. I wasn’t sure at first, but I recognized she was saying something about the last envelope I mailed. It sounded like she had under-charged me in early November and was saying that I owed ¥50 more on the postage (an item that was already sent).
But that wasn’t it. What she was doing was apologizing to me for giving me the wrong change one month earlier, saying that they still owed me ¥50, about 75¢. On her desk she had a note written on paper wrapped around a ¥50 coin (one of two Japanese coins that have a hole in the middle. The other is the ¥5 coin.) I was surprised that she felt motivated to save the change for so long, anticipating seeing me again. Her honesty and sense of duty are very Japanese.
Japanese are well-known for returning, or turning in to police, lost items, including money. Furthermore, it is well-known that a person can leave their belongings unattended for a time and they will most likely remain untouched. Yes, there is crime - theft and such. But not nearly on the scale of America. Tokyo is fairly safe, fairly clean, and fairly quiet, too. And, Japanese are very polite to your face (even if they secretly hate your guts).