Safer than the Safest Safe Place

Posted on 22. Feb, 2006 @ 9:34 pm by in Culture Views: 420

We all know that Japan is a surprisingly safe country.  I think that more than one of us has a story about losing a wallet, only to have it promptly returned, with all he cash in place!

Or once, I personally forgot my entire backpack, PC inside and all, on an extremely local
train (last stop).  I panicked, ran back to the station as soon as I realized (train was long gone), and luckily, a passenger had picked it up and turned it into the station master.  All I had to do was describe the contents and the bag was promptly returned to me.

One time, the local film shop mistakenly forgot to give me back one roll of developed film I turned in… And they remembered and handed it back to me an entire month later! Needless to say, this would not be expected in my home country.

With all these stories of lost items being returned, store cashiers chasing customers down who forget their change… I was starting to believe that there could not be a country possibly any safer!

Until I recently took a trip to the Czech Republic!

This is in a town called Kutna Hora, about one hour from Prague by train. Famous for a Ossuary they have there with chandeliers made of human skulls.  I digress…

When mothers (maybe fathers too? Didn’t see.) shop and have their baby buggies with them, they will leave the baby buggy parked outside of the shop while they go in and do
their shopping!

And I mean with the baby still inside!  So if you can picture it… Strolling along the street with baby in the baby buggy. Happen to pass an interesting shop.  Stop the buggy outside, on the sidewalk (being sure to apply the brakes so it doesn’t roll away of
course), and walking inside to take care of business.
What if while shopping someone walked by and stole the baby?!

Is my home country so uptight and paranoid that I am the only one who worries about this?

Anyway, I think the unattended baby outside phenomenon tops even the uncanny safety of Japan.   You can bet though, that even if I lived in Czech, I would carry my baby inside the store with me!

  • Liam McNulty

    Did you verify there was actually a baby inside? It could have been a dog, or the parent may have just left the stroller unattended as they shopped the store, baby in arm.

  • http://www.japannewbie.com harvey

    I did! In fact, I saw it happen like 5 times while I was in that city!

    Guess next time I’ll have to take a picture of the sleeping babies mug as proof.

  • Vince

    In fact I’ve seen this here in Sweden several times. My opinion is that doing this is imprudent, since normal people will not do anything of course, but there is always a change of some crazy or drunk bastard passes by..

  • http://blogs.notagreendragon.cbs.dk/node/feed Anders

    Actually there was a case in Copenhagen, where a woman was arrested for leaving her baby outside a shop in a carrier. I think she did time for it as well, but don’t hold me to that. So it’s not just you guys!

  • meshugine

    Harvey, may I recommend that you dont go around taking photos of strangers babies??

    You could end up with some explaining to do to the law!!!!

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  • mikey

    I’ve only seen that happen in a Czech film once and never actually thought that was true.

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