Kamakura Coin Locker Drama

The weekend before last we took time out to travel to Kamakura, which is along the coast near Tokyo, to visit friends. I had been to Kamakura once before and loved the place so was eager to visit again.  On the Friday we took the Shinkansen from Osaka to a town near our destination then from there traveled by normal train, the journey taking about four hours in total.

When finally arriving at Kamakura station we had four hours to kill so went to find a coin locker to deposit our baggage then went off to see the sights. We spent most of the time browsing shops along the main high street and had coffee in an interesting cafe, that has a very bohemian looking interior, that bakes its own bread, the banana bread was especially tasty!

 Sundown in Kamakura

After a few hours of browsing we returned to the station and headed for the lockers to retrieve our baggage and meet our friends. However, our happiness soon turned to horror upon opening our locker and finding it empty! For a while we were in shock wondering how this could have happened as the door had still been locked and there is a surveillance camera in the locker room. 

After pulling ourselves together we went off hunting for an available policeman. At this point our friend turned up and we explained the situation, during which five police officers turned up at once! Having explained what had happened to them they looked surprised, telling us that this has only happened once before about three years ago and followed us to the locker. After checking the locker room they all went off to speak to the locker room attendant, then, upon returning, asked what the contents of our bags were. We told them everything we had lost and then where amazed and incredibly relieved to hear that they knew what had happened and had our bags!

Feeling elated, we followed the officers to a nearby room to find that our bags were indeed there. My elation didn't last for long however when I heard what had happened. A very honest person had reported that they had opened locker 247 to put their belongings in and had found our bags there, however we had the key for locker 246, the one above. What we had done was to put our things in 247, shut the door then looked in our wallets to find change. When we had the correct coins, I had turned back, put the coins in 246 and taken that key rather than 247!

Needles to say, I wasn't allowed to forget about that incident all weekend, and probably for many years to come but we were so relieved to get our things back that we could see the funny side of it and enjoyed the rest of the weekend!