Thursday, July 12, 2007

Hitting the jackpot while spending a penny

Money flows free in men's toilets in Japan - ABC News

That heading was too hard to resist, sorry.

Anyhow, the story is that visiting a public toilet can be very profitable for some in Japan:

The suburban sprawl of Saitama, north of Tokyo, does not make the news that often. But it is not everyday that someone visiting the toilet finds a box of 10,000 yen notes - each worth $A100, each wrapped in a traditional Japanese paper envelope.

Reports of the find in the Saitama local government headquarters flushed out similar incidents across the country...

The first case now seems to have been in September 2006, in Shizuoka prefecture in central Japan. Similar events have been reported in 18 of Japan's 47 prefectures, from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south.

National broadcaster NHK has tallied up the figures and believes around 400 envelopes have been found - the equivalent of $40,000.

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