Tokyo has an unmanned, honor-system electronics and appliance shop

Summary

Mr. Sato takes a trip to GO12, easily the strangest place in the city to buy a microwave. “The office microwave is broken, so we need someone to go out and buy a new one.” That was the situation our boss, Yoshio, laid out for the staff at SoraNews24 headquarters. It should have been a simple, ordinary errand to run…but our crack reporter Mr. Sato volunteered for the task, and if you know the guy, you also know that projects rarely stay ordinary when he’s involved. So instead of walking to the Bic Camera electronics store down the street from us in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, or using this as an excuse to head over to the Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara and hang out in the otaku wonderland for the afternoon, Mr. Sato ride the train to the Kamata neighborhood, then walked from the station to GO12, a completely unmanned electronics and appliance shop. ▼ “Unmanned shop” and “Open 24 hours” proclaim the sign, since if there’s no one working there, it never has to close. Sometimes in the Japanese countryside you can find unmanned fruit and vegetable shops. They’re essentially little produce stands where local farmers offer their crops for purchase on the honor system, a system that would be considered a recipe for trouble in many places outside low-crime Japan. GO12 works on more or less the same format, but even with Japan’s reputation as a law-abiding society, it’s pretty startling to step into a shop filled with rows of TVs, refrigerators, and the like with no one guarding them. It’s not like the merchandise is locked inside a vending machine, chained down, or otherwise secured, either. It’s all just out on the shelves, like it would be at a store with clerks, guards, and other human employees keeping an eye on it. And while a would-be crook is unlikely to grab a washing machine and make a break for it, GO12 has plenty of less-bulky items too, like hot water kettles and hair dryers. Still, GO12 trusts everyone to be on their best behavior, and though it’s only been open s...