The Chronicle of an iPhone in Tokyo
My boyfriend and I arrive at the airport and begin a long fight for WiFi in the crowded Haneda Airport. Should we have planned out the eSIM situation better? Yes. But should an international airport have WiFi speeds faster than forty minutes to download an app? Also, yes. When our phones are finally connected to some form of signal, we wade through the crowd onto the subway and away to the city center.
The lights are bright in Tokyo, neon signs line the streets, filling the humdrum of everyday people. Filled with excitement, we drop off our bags at the hotel and meander through the neighboring streets. It is New Year’s Day (though it does not feel like it, as our flight passed through the midnight mark before we were able to celebrate). There are friends gathered in the streets, drinking, cheering, and galavanting. We stop for a quick bite at one of the famed 7-Elevens and pass out before we know it.
The next two days are filled with sightseeing, delicious food, and lots and lots of walking. So much so that energy is at a low by the third day of travel. The jet lag is beginning to sink in, and our feet felt like stones. We stop by for a late lunch at an udon spot in the middle of Shinjuku with a food crawl planned for the rest of the afternoon. Wanting a break from all the walking and subway navigation, we made the executive decision to take a taxi *just once* to our next stop. I place the request on my phone, and we sit on a bus bench awaiting the saving steed. It arrives, and we scoot in, knowing no more than how to say, “thank you very much” to the driver.
Then my boyfriend turns to me: “Do you have my phone?” he asks.
“Why would I have your phone?” My eyes widened.
“I don’t have it. It might be back on the bench.”
At this point, our lack of Japanese knowledge becomes quite the predicament. We do not know how to tell the driver to turn around, and we sit in panic. Tracking his phone on mine, it hasn’t moved from the bench. Seven minutes left to the destination.
Whispering like madmen in the back of the taxi, we decide perhaps it might be easier to get to our destination and just order another taxi back. I tell myself over and over that “Japan is known to have a very respectful culture and that the phone is old enough to not be worth much anyway.” It helps soothe only slightly.
We hop out of the car and say our “thank yous.” We quickly turn around to wave down a taxi that is dropping off another passenger, hopefully out of eyeshot of our original taxi driver. The entire ten-minute ride back feels like an eternity. I sit with the tracking information glued to my screen, and at some point, it stops updating. Bad news that I’ve decided to keep to myself for the time being.
Back at the park bench, we frantically scour the bench. No phone. I run into the udon spot with my translator app, asking about a lost phone. They haven’t seen anything. So, we look at the ground, pacing up and down the 100 steps we could have taken, and still nothing. I run into the neighboring lottery ticket store with a translated note, hoping that maybe someone turned it onto their desk. The lady seems deeply apologetic to tell me there has not been a phone spotted recently.
At this point, the pits in our stomachs grow larger. Did we just lose a phone in the middle of a foreign country three days into a two-week trip? The optics seemed like it. I turn to ask what we should do next before I notice a small sign tucked next to the subway station entrance: Lost and Found Police Station. What are the odds?
I ran into a small room, about the size of a closet, tucked into the side of a building. There are two chairs on the side of a check-in desk and one police officer dressed in uniform waiting to greet us. Handing over my phone with the translated note, we ask if anyone has turned in a phone in the past hour. He proceeds to ask what color the phone is, to which we answer, and he goes silent for a moment. He goes into the back office, starts a long conversation, and returns with the long-lost phone (well, thirty-minutes lost).
He opens it to a background of a photo of us on it and says, “unlock it to prove it’s yours.” I can’t help but giggle a little bit at the rigid protocol-following. But my boyfriend does unlock his phone and proceeds to be reunited with it. We cannot remember what we were supposed to be doing with our day, but we thank the officers and leave relieved.
