This is the photo that Amazon sent a couple of weeks ago to tell me that delivery of my purchased item was complete. Nothing earth-shattering about that, you may think, but the key point here is that the item in question was an 80,000 yen (about 400 GBP) iPad, purchased as a present for M Jr. to congratulate her on graduating from elementary school and – much more importantly – passing her entrance exam to get into a selective junior high school (a long story that I’ll bore you with another time). Yes, those rumours that you’ve heard about Japan being safe and crime-free really are true. I had heard the same rumours myself before the first time I came here in 2002 and, as an experiment, left my suitcase unattended at Narita Airport while I was waiting for the bus to Tsukuba. Just like the iPad, the suitcase wasn’t stolen, which only counts as what Andrew Huberman likes to refer to as ‘anecdata,’ but during the 15 years or so that I’ve lived here since, I’ve experienced very little to refute the rumours and the reputation.
I should point out, however, that even here and even in the small, quiet, country town where we live; even though our front door is hidden away behind the art cinema next door and a high-ish garden fence, given the choice, I would prefer that something as valuable – not to mention breakable – as a brand-new iPad be delivered directly into my waiting grasp. Basically, I seem to remember specifying in the delivery instructions for a much less costly Amazon purchase a year or two ago that if the delivery operative rang the doorbell and I wasn’t in, it would be fine for them to leave it outside the door, and haven’t managed or bothered to change those instructions since. Also, I have heard stories of, for example, an iPhone going missing from a tabletop in Starbucks, a Nintendo Switch going missing from a sushi restaurant waiting area, and a bicycle (albeit unlocked) going missing from its parking place outside a railway station. Perhaps influenced by YouTube or the police people who sometimes visit their school to talk about crime prevention, M Jr. and M Jr. II also insist that Japan isn’t as safe as people think (M Jr. goes so far as to refer to it as ‘dangerous’).
So, don’t let your guard down, people, and make sure you edit your Amazon delivery instructions in accordance with the relative value of your order.
