I was robbed in Tokyo recently, an experience as unexpected as it was distressing. Despite long years in London, plus decades of rough and ready globetrotting to some of the sketchiest places on earth, I have never been a victim in any of these notorious crime hotspots (I feel snubbed especially by London), but this was the second such experience in supposedly the safest city in the world.
What are the odds? The first time I dropped my wallet in a branch of the bargain bucket Don Quijote store and later received a phone call from the staff saying they had it, with ID cards intact but 50,000 yen gone. This time there was no phone call, it’s all gone, a similar amount of cash but far more worryingly, my entire suite of credit and ID cards.
It probably happened in the teeming and chaotic Tokyo mega-station with my small backpack unzipped and the wallet removed while I wandered around in my habitual careless, reverie. One gets complacent in Japan. It would have been the work of a moment. Two hours on the phone speaking to robots to block the cards, a day in the air conditioner-free hell that is the Tokyo Immigration centre, and another day spent assembling documents for three separate submissions to Japan’s leading credit agencies to forestall identity theft (a huge problem here) was just the work of the first few days. There is plenty more to do.
