Wallet Mystery

Among my most consistent rituals is the Wednesday night track workout. At the track, like everywhere in Japan I have been completely unconcerned about crime (in contrast to say when I lived near South-Central Los Angeles in the early 1990s and one was expected to maintain a state of vigilance on a 24-hour basis). After a while you just grow relaxed here -- twice in Japan I have left my wallet on the train and each time it returned, cash intact. Once I left my passport on a public phone, and another time I left my cell phone in a taxi and again they were quickly returned to me. So when I finish my running workout and shower and my wallet is not in my pants pocket I immediately assume I somehow dropped it. However, I cannot find the wallet in a quick search of the surrounding area, and I know I must have had the wallet when I arrived at the locker room and put my pants in the locker. My locker was only unlocked for a matter of minutes while I showered, and surely no one would brazenly reach into the locker, take out my trousers, remove my wallet, and then neatly fold and replace my pants in that time? I start to grow concerned when the lost & found at the track office does not have my wallet and they send me to the nearby koban (the neighborhood police box).

I spend hours at the koban, a bizarrely low-tech process -- the police officer scribbles notes on tiny scraps of paper and then with glacial slowness rewrites them into a multi-page report which I certify by applying a thumbprint in dozens of different spots. The report is all in Japanese so I have no idea what I am actually certifying.

By the time I am through at the Koban it is late at night but I still am able to catch up with a few teammates nearby and manage to borrow a few thousand yen from Chris to get home and buy a rice ball for dinner. The effort and concern on the part of the Japanese teammates and track staff is astonishing -

• the area garbage collectors are put on alert to look for a wallet as they sort the trash
  
• a team of student assistants is mobilized to scour every locker
  
• Namban teammate, Chiba-san, contacts various local officials to pressure them to crack this heinous case
  

But days pass and the wallet does not materialize. Technically I am supposed to replace my alien registration card right away, but I naively cling to the expectation that my wallet will appear in my mailbox any day now.