March 20 - A Research Study Into the Honesty of Japanese People

The Japanese are well known for their honesty. Stories abound of lost wallets and purses (and their contents) being mailed back to their owners by the scrupulous Japanese citizens who find them. However, it always seemed that none of the stories people hear are ever traceable to a particular person who has experienced this honesty phenomenon firsthand, so one day armchair sociologist Martin Greengrass decided to put the stories to the test.
He got five wallets and put cash, pictures, restaurant/store point cards, and a piece of identification (with his address) in each one. Then he went out and "left behind" each wallet in a public place.
This proved harder than he'd thought. Tokyo is a crowded city, and the first several times he set one of the wallets down on a bench or counter top and walked away from it, he was chased down by someone who'd seen him do it and was eager to return it to him. However, he eventually managed to leave all five behind without being noticed. Then he went home and waited for the wallets to find their way back to him.
A few days passed.
Then a week.
And then another week.
And then midway through the third week the police showed up at Martin's door with all five wallets and their contents, along with a translator, having (correctly) assumed that Martin's Japanese wasn't that good.
They asked him why he had so many wallets and how he had managed to lose them all. He sheepishly told them about his experiment, and the translator told him that they had suspected that that's what had been going on.
"It is an interesting experiment, Greengrass-san," the translator told him. "However, your methods are not so sound. Five wallets in one city does not constitute a sufficient experimental sample. Also, your placements were too . . . what is the word . . . haphazard? Furthermore, you had no control groups. Therefore, we took the liberty of conducting our own study based on what we assumed was your premise--that given the opportunity, Japanese people will do the morally upstanding thing and return lost or forgotten property to its rightful owner. Here," he said, handing Martin a binder that read A Research Study Into the Honesty of Japanese People.
"We apologize for taking such a long time to return your wallets, but it took us some time to put this study together."
Martin thumbed through the binder which contained charts, tables, and extensive explanations of all the contents. It was well over 100 pages long.
"You put this together just for me?"
The translator nodded. "We hope you don't think we were too--" he typed something into his electronic dictionary,"--presumptuous, but it seemed that this is what you were looking for."
The translator took Martin's silence for understanding and thanked him for his time. Then he and the other policemen bowed and went back to their office.