31 million yen found in trash piles in Saitama Japan
31 million yen found in trash piles in Saitama
SAITAMA—- ..found in trash piles at an industrial waste disposal facility in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture… …an employee …first noticed some of the bills in the trash while sorting woodchip and plastics waste Thursday, and the facility has since collected about 31 million yen, mostly in 10,000 yen bills….
Yikes! DaSaitama is good for something — rich trash!
Gee, don’t you wish you could find 31 million yen ($267,300 USD) in the trash at work?
Actually, this happen ALL THE TIME in Japan. Why?
Well…. first the banks only give 0.015% interest on bank accounts. Yes, that’s less the ONE percent on regular accounts but high-interest savings can give 1.75%, W00T! Likewise, there are many Japanese stocks to invest in that offer gains. So people just stuff piles of cash in regular cardboard boxes that get thrown out in the trash. Not to worry.
Thrown away cash is always returned when found. It’s not just that Japanese are honest—there’s no “finders-keepers” common law in Japan, Everything has an owner, including cash in the trash. The finder always gets a 10-15% finders fee IF the money is turned into the police and the owner claims it. Often the owner does not claim the lost money because it’s tax evasion money and the finder receives the money after a period of time.
This goes back the old British Common Law of Finders…. in 1722, the chimney sweep case, Armory v. Delamirie. The fundamental rule is the right of a finder of lost property is good as against all other claims except it’s orginal owner who has the burdern of proof to reclaim his property. Japanese people “know” their lost property rule—finders must turn in lost property to the police within a number of days and will receives a reward if the property is not claimed. If somebody does not turn in the lost property, they get busted.
For a long essay comparing Japan and US in terms of lost money, refer to: Losers: Recovering Lost Property in Japan and the United States (in PDF/Adobe Acrobat format) published in “37:2 Law & Society Review (June 2003)” by Mark West.
*DASAI (ã ã•ã„) means “tacky/unsophisticated/out of fashion” in Japanese and is the standard putdown for the poorer cousin of Tokyo, Saitama Prefecture.
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