Losing Your Camera or Phone on a Trip
Some years ago we lost our camera during the first week of a 3-week trip to Europe. This was really hard for us because we didn’t have cell phones we could use as cameras (this was in 2007) and we had only brought one camera. For future trips we now bring two real cameras, and have our phones as additional “back-upsâ€.
On the Bullet Train to Kyoto we were rushing to get off at our stop and left my phone and one of our cameras on the train. We didn’t realize we had done this until we got to our hotel and started looking for them.
Had this been Italy, Paris, or anywhere in the U.S. I would have given them up for lost. But this was Japan. I figured if there was any chance of them being turned in to a lost and found it was here.
So I went to the front desk clerk and asked her if she could help me. I told her what we lost, what train we were on, where we were sitting, everything I could think of. She was on the phone for about 20-30 minutes then told us they located our camera and phone! It was at a lost-and-found desk at the next city (about a 30-minute train ride away). She wrote out instructions in Japanese to hand to the person working the lost and found and gave us directions on how to get there.
We decided it would be easier (and cheaper) for just one of us to go, so my husband went to retrieve our camera and phone while I took the kids to lunch.
It took an extra two hours out of our day and the cost of the train ticket, but you can imagine our relief compared to what happened to us the last time.
Here’s hoping we don’t have to learn that lesson a third time; I know we may not be that lucky again.
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