What’s the oddest left-behind item you’ve ever seen on public transport? Have you ever lost something on a train, and did it find its way back to you?

My tatty old notebook was handed in, but a dept. store shopping bag filled with luxury cosmetics was not. Go figure!

So far, I've returned two cell phones, and a college ID card. But the oddest thing I saw on a train wasn't left behind... a clothed girl mannequin (maybe 13 or 14 year old size) with whom its male owner was apparently having an intimate relationship.

A condom

I dropped my return ticket on a trip to Kochi Prefecture and the station staff were waiting for me at the gate two days later when I was trying to return and found it missing from my wallet. A staff member took me into a office and handed me my lost ticket. Pretty spiffy, all things considered.

You're not going to believe this but some old guy came onto the train, performed a 'Shinto ritual' & then left the beads on the seat next to me - before getting off at the next stop!

One day long ago on the Shinkansen to Okayama, seated next to the most-beautiful-girl-in-the-world, and sadly at my stop, left my heart on the seat.

It was never returned.

Just three days ago - on a fairly crowded Yamanote seat in a train at Shinjuku, with people standing around - a folded Y10,000 note. My bum was halfway down before I noticed. The people either side sort of looked away. So I gently picked it up, sat down and emailed the wife. I took it to the station where office where I got off. They looked at me like I had two heads and said, "What can we do?" I stuck it in a charity box at Denny's. It was not the note as much as everything and everybody else around it that was odd.