Tokyo Taxi Cabs To Keep You From Losing Things; Quake Rattles Tokyo

Above, a taxi cab near Tokyo Station.  Photo by Armand Vaquer.

I've never lost anything in a taxi in Japan, but I did lose a cell phone (it fell off my belt) in a Los Angeles taxi.

Tokyo taxi cabs will be equipped to remedy such a situation soon.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

Many of us have experienced that sinking feeling of forgetting a phone, bag, wallet or other valuable possession in the back of a taxi. 

Japan, already home to some of the world’s most conscientious cabbies, wants to put an end to all that with a technological fix. 

Tokyo-based taxi Kokusai Motorcars Co. plans to equip its vehicles with a camera system that automatically detects when items are left behind. The system, co-developed with technology consultants Ideacross, uses four small cameras – two under the front seats, one on the ceiling, and one in the trunk – to record images of the back seat before and after a passenger enters the taxi. If a passenger leaves the car forgetting an item that wasn’t there before getting in, the system sounds an alarm.

This sounds like an excellent idea!

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Speaking of Japan, Tokyo was rattled by an earthquake about four hours ago.  

JapanToday reported:

TOKYO —A strong 6.5 magnitude earthquake hit eastern Japan on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, but local authorities said there was no risk of a tsunami. 

The quake, measured at 6.9 by Japanese seismologists, was centered on a spot more than 600 kilometers south of Tokyo, the USGS said. 

The quake struck at 9:18 a.m. at a depth of 404 kilometers, the USGS said. It was felt in Miyagi, Fukushima, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, as well as in Tokyo where it registered a 3.