Godmilla and the Cops

So I find a wallet with 2000 yen and a suica card. The suica card is a rechargeable public transit card you swipe when you enter the subway. This one had been tagged, so it could be used to find the owner. You can put anywhere up to 10,000 yen on these cards, so there is potential it is valuable.

I decide I will be a good tourist and hand these into the police. I enter a police station. There are about 20 cops inside, straight out of a John Woo movie. The desk sergeant is a young woman in a spiffy, pressed uniform. They're all a little wary about why I'm there.

I hand in the wallet and say, "I found this on the street." They seem perplexed. I say, "Okay, bye!" All 20 cops scream at me to wait. That's when I realize this is a bad idea.

Paperwork.

Now where I come from, the cops would probably thank me for the effort, pocket the 2000 yen and toss away the leather wallet. But things are done differently here. The young female cop tries to talk to me in really bad English. She asks me to write down my name. I write Miller Godmilla and this doesn't ring any bells. Am I just visiting? Yep. What's my address? I have no idea. Phone number? I decide to give it. Probably a mistake. I am asked to pinpoint on a map where I found the wallet and what time.

Then a translator is called in. Oh my god. Thirty minutes have passed. The translator is a shorter woman. She smiles and nods a lot. She explains that if they can't find the owner, I get to keep the money, wallet and suica card. I say that's okay, I'm just visiting. "You don't want it?" she asks. No, I explain. If I wanted the money, I would have kept it. "Okay. Well, by law you are entitled to demand 20% of the value of everything you returned from the owner." Hmm... I ask, "Including the value of the wallet?" She shakes her head and says she is not sure. "And how about the value of the receipts in the wallet? That's about 40,000 yen worth." She shakes her head. "No, I think that the receipts have no value." I tell her I was just joking and I don't want 20% of the value of the stuff from the owner. I just want to return it.

No problem. But if I don't want to make claim of ownership of the wallet or demand 20%, then I have to sign papers giving up my rights. What rights? I have no rights. I found a freaking wallet on the street and thought I'd be nice and give it back. Too bad. So I sign documents and have no idea what they really mean.

The name and signature of Godmilla now exist on official Japanese police paperwork and I hope, whether the owner gets his stuff back or not, this is the last I hear of it.