Today we have two stories—one about a cat with an important job and the other about a woman who lost her winning lottery ticket.
A Purr-fect Promotion
In the port town of Choshi near Tokyo, employees of a struggling railway company found either a stray or an abandoned cat last October skulking around the station, thin and sick and eyes frozen shut. The tabby was nursed back to health by the platform staff before signing up as an apprentice in January.
Then in July, Neko-no-san achieved the rank of station master and was awarded with a neat cap and a medallion for her collar. Her CV includes such crucial skills as pushing mice off desks and sleeping on paperwork.
She now figures prominently in the Choshi Electric Railway Company public relations content as a mascot. Being too close to Tokyo to stand out but too far away to comfortably visit, Choshi Railway felt that more needed to be done to draw interest in the city's numerous historic temples, lighthouses, and characteristic waterfront area. To that end, the four-legged station master seemed a good idea.
In January, at Wakayama Electric Railways Company's Kishi Station in the city of Kinokawa, officials welcomed their third station master cat. In 2007, the station announced that Japan's first ever cat station master, Tama. After Tama had passed away in 2015, she was succeeded by Nitama, who looked just like her. That cat passed away last November and now Kishi Station is run by Yontama, the fourth cat.
The publicity from Tama's original 2007 appointment led to an increase in passengers by 17% for that month. A study estimated that the publicity surrounding Tama has contributed 1.1 billion yen to the local economy, and she was widely credited with saving the Nishi Station from closing.
The Ticket that Almost Got Away
After winning a million euros, a woman mistakenly tossed the lucky lottery ticket into a trash bin.
The story begins with a simple misunderstanding. When the woman went to redeem her ticket at the machine inside her local tobacconist, the person said that the ticket was non-payable. Funnily, and almost tragically enough, this can mean one of two things. Either there are no winnings on the ticket, or the winnings are too substantial to be redeemed by the small shop. The woman threw the ticket away thinking it was the former case, but a family member noticed the winning numbers were the ones that she always played, associated as they were with a loved one, and called her to ask her if she had bought a ticket.
The pair rushed to the shop only to be told that the trash had already been taken away.
SANB received the woman's frantic call, and the Toscano's began to try and reconstruct the ticket's journey. Searching for a whole day, staff recovered the ticket to the woman's tearful delight.
It's a double stroke of luck and a reminder never to give up searching for your lost possessions.
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