It’s Raining Yen
Have you seen the NY Lotto commercial with bundles of money just falling from the sky? Well, apparently that is what is happening in Japan- well, kind of.
Yahoo News reports that at an apartment building in Tokyo a number of people have discovered unmarked envelopes in their mailboxes each containing about 1.81 million yen (almost $16,000).
In an example of how different the Japanese are from Americans, they phoned the police to report the money, thinking it was fake. When it turned out to be real, they still handed it over to the police. In another apartment building in Kob, a woman received a similar gift in her mail of 1 million yen.
Continuing on the theme of money randomly appearing, a bunch of envelopes have been reported found in the restrooms of public building around Tokyo containing large sums of money and last week “bills worth 960,000 yen were inexplicably seen ‘falling’ in front of a convenience store… ‘We can just say the money came from the skies,’ a puzzled police official said. ‘There were other passers-by outside and customers in the store but the incident caused no confusion’ he said. ‘People thought it was too eerie to touch.’” Clearly not Americans, I am guessing this would have caused a riot here.
Although there is some speculation that the money may be from a public servant or new-age religious group, there is no real evidence one way or another and there really is no harm being done.
There have been other incidents reported as well. This all just makes me even more excited for my upcoming trip to Tokyo at the end of the month. I am definitely going to make sure to exam the men’s rooms in public buildings ever so closely.
July 30th, 2007 at
Yes, the Japanese are motivated to avoid shame. We heathens avoid guilt. Shame is stronger!