As I was looking through my photos from Japan to prepare my 25 things to do in Japan post, I came across this rather poor-quality snapshot and wondered what it was. The caption was “Sapporo Locker Rules” and I soon remembered that I had left my luggage in a locker in the main Sapporo station while I was off exploring Hokkaido, the northern-most island of Japan.
There were a number of rules involved with using these lockers. And fortunately, they had translated these rules into English. In case you (understandably) can’t read the picture, the rules include a list of Forbidden Objects:
1. Hazardous substances which are volatile/explosive
Fair call, and I am pretty sure my bag was free of bombs or otherwise explosive items.
2. A dead body
!?! Because, of course, if I happen to be in possession of a dead body, storing it in a train station locker is exactly what would spring to mind. The list goes on to include logical items like guns, knives, offensive-smelling items, animals, and valuables, but I was pretty glad to know that my fellow locker-users would not be storing random corpses in these lockers.
A dead body. Well, just as well they put that one in – God knows what the station would have been like without it ! 🙂
Dead body!! OMG, I wonder if such a thing has happened, but how big would these lockers need to be for such a thing to happen? As for dirt, smelly or perishable things…that´s certainly a weird rule list.
@ Jenny – yes, lucky isn’t it? I had to store my dead body somewhere else!
@ Sami – it did make me wonder if it was a previous incident that made them put this on the list … but I didn’t want to wonder too much. I always felt Japan was a very safe place!