Having lost/mislaid stuff in Japan myself and gotten it back very rapidly, I can attest to the Japanese being very honest
Perhaps in general people tend to be honest? all those yellow stickers on my gear with name/address have paid off handsomely over the years. I have put camera on a roadside and left without remembering to bring it with me, and returned later to find it intact. In another case there was no camera, but a note stating who had taken it and would I please come and retrieve it at a neighbour's. Once I absent-mindedly left my biggest Sachtler tripod with the even bigger video head on a river near a scenic waterfall, and got a phone call 2 weeks later from a guy who visited the area regularly, had seen it several times and eventually had taken care of it. I offered him reward money which he declined to accept. A few days ago I got a phone call from a woman who had found my Bad Elf GPS that I lost on a lake six months ago. Yesterday I received it in the mail. And so on.
