In my third year in Japan, I have started to get sick of a lot of things. The inane beaurocracy in getting anything done officially, the inflexibility of their estabilished systems, the gawking and glaring by people who should be old enough to know better, and a myriad of other annoyances, both big and small.

That said, something happened this weekend that reminded me that there are wonderful things about Japan, things that you can't expect to find anywhere else in the world. It's just that I've become so accustomed to them takes a lot to shake me into recognizing it anew. One of these things is the amazing honesty of the Japanese people.

This weekend I met up in Osaka with a friend and we did some shopping. I had been looking for a new digital camera, and after a lot of test driving, decided on a nice new Canon IS25. I picked it up at the major electronics department store in Osaka, Yodobashi Camera, for a pretty good price, though it was still nothing to sneeze at. Contented in my purchase, we continued on with our evening in the big city.

Having spent the money on the camera, I realized a little later in the evening that it'd be nice to pick up some more cash for the rest of the night and next day. In Osaka station, on our way to our next subway train, I stopped at an ATM and made a withdrawl. I then exited the ATM booth and went on to catch the train, no problems.

Except that I forgot my Yodobashi Camera bag there. In the biggest subway station in the second largest city in Japan. On a busy Saturday night. A brand-new camera, not even out of the box, in a well-known electronics store bag.

It wasn't until many hours later, when we went to play with my new camera in the hotel, that I realized it. By then it was pretty late, and while I knew immediately that I must have left it at the ATM, I also realized the trains to get there weren't running anymore. I wasn't even 100% sure where in the subway station the ATM was, though I had the reciept to tell me the bank. Pushing back the panic in my brain, I tried to stay calm...freaking out wouldn't do me any good, I'd simply have to wait until the morning to go and try and find it...

The next day, we re-traced our steps to find the ATM. After some freak-out-inducing difficulties, we found the ATM booth where I'd made my withdrawl. There was nothing on the ATM machine I used. That was to be expected. We went next door to the bank branch connected, and they sent us to station information, who in turn gave us a number to call Osaka Station lost and found.

Dispair creeping in, we decided to go sit in a quieter place and make the call. On the way, I wanted to look just one more time at the ATM corner...I looked at the row of ATM machines, the seats to the side of the small room, and then, behind a standing sign in the corner of the room...

...where my camera bag was sitting, waiting unharmed for me. Someone had placed it there, out of sight to someone not looking, but still in the place where it had been left. In the second largest city in Japan, on a Saturday night.

Any other place in the world, my camera would have been gone. No question. Even in my tiny hometown, the hopes of retrieving something like that would be slim. And yet here in Japan, the thought of taking it probably never crossed the mind of the person who moved my bag. I'll never know if it was some other ATM user, a security guard, or what, but I know that I'm so very grateful to them, and to Japan as a whole, for being so wonderfully honest.

And that is a quality hard to find anywhere else.

working on the self

working on things. running 3 times a week. watching the diet a bit more. learning guitar. still taking yoga (though i completely forgot about it today). biking/walking/training to work instead of taking the car (which is in the shop, so that helps). changing my hairstyle, gonna grow out the bangs after so many years.

trying to get some art done too. mixed results on that so far...some good construction paper work for friends, but collage is being elusive. did some good work for the Uni Qlo t-shirt competition this year though. waiting til the end of the month to hear about that.



of course, more mixes. working on one now, but no cover/tracklist til it's finished. lots of great new material to work with though. here are some old ones that hadn't made up up yet. summer mix is a bit late, but hey, there's always next summer.