In Japan, lost items are rarely disconnected from their owners for long, even in a mega city like Tokyo -- population 14 million.

"Foreign visitors are often surprised to get their things back," said Hiroshi Fujii, a 67-year-old tour guide, describing Tokyo's vast police lost-and-found centre.

"But in Japan, there's always an expectation that we will."

It's a "national trait" to report items found in public places in Japan, he told AFP. "We pass down this custom of reporting things we picked up, from parents to children."

Around 80 staff at the police centre in Tokyo's central Iidabashi district ensure items are well organised using a database system, its director Harumi Shoji told AFP.

Everything is tagged and sorted to hasten a return to its rightful owner.

ID cards and driving licences are most frequently lost, Shoji said.

- Flying squirrels, iguanas -

But dogs, cats and even flying squirrels and iguanas have been dropped off at police stations, where officers look after them "with great sensitivity" -- consulting books, online articles and vets for advice.

More than four million items were handed in to Tokyo Metropolitan Police last year, with about 70 percent of valuables such as wallets, phones and important documents successfully reunited with their owners.

"Even if it's just a key, we enter details such as the mascot keychain it's attached to," Shoji said in a room filled with belongings, including a large Cookie Monster stuffed toy.

Over the course of one afternoon, dozens of people came to collect or search for their lost property at the centre, which receives items left with train station staff or at small local police stations across Tokyo if they are not claimed within two weeks.

"The first thing we think is that people who lost their items must be in trouble so I think it's normal for us that we report it to police," Shoji said.

If no one turns up at the police facility within three months, the unwanted item is sold or discarded.

The number of lost items handled by the centre is increasing as Japan welcomes a record influx of tourists post-pandemic, and as gadgets become smaller, Shoji said.

Wireless earphones and hand-held fans are an increasingly frequent sight at the lost-and-found centre, which has been operating since the 1950s.

But a whopping 200 square metres (2,100 square feet) is dedicated to lost umbrellas -- 300,000 of which were brought in last year, with only 3,700 of them returned, Shoji said.

"We have a designated floor for umbrellas... during the rainy season, there are so many umbrellas that the umbrella trolley is overflowing and we have to store them in two tiers."

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Suspicions were aroused when a claim was made for ripped seats and damaged doors on a luxury Rolls-Royce Ghost, an exclusive vehicle worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Claimants said a bear had got into the car when it was parked in Lake Arrowhead, a mountain spot outside Los Angeles, wreaking havoc on its interior.

To back up their claim, they provided photos of the damage as well as footage from a security camera, which they said showed the animal inside the vehicle.

But the company smelled a rat and contacted insurance fraud detectives.

"Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume," said a release from the California Department of Insurance.

Investigators then combed through records and found two other claims against different insurance companies alleging bear damage to different vehicles -- a 2015 Mercedes G63 AMG and a 2022 Mercedes E350 -- at the same spot.

Both claims had also been accompanied by video footage of the same "bear" rampaging around the vehicles.

"To further ensure it was not actually a bear in the video, the Department had a biologist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife review the three alleged bear videos and they also opined it was clearly a human in a bear suit," Wednesday's statement said.

"After executing a search warrant, detectives found the bear costume in the suspects' home."

Ruben Tamrazian, 26, Ararat Chirkinian, 39, Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, have all been charged with insurance fraud and conspiracy over the claims, which were worth over $140,000.

Black bears, which are native to California, occasionally do get inside vehicles in the hunt for food, and can cause tremendous damage.

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The work, entitled "All The Good Times We Spent Together" by French artist Alexandre Lavet, appears on first glance to be two discarded and dented beer tins.

However, a closer look shows they are in fact meticulously hand-painted with acrylics and "required a lot of time and effort to create", according to the museum.

But their artistic value was lost on a mechanic, who saw them displayed in a lift and chucked them in the bin.

Froukje Budding, a spokeswoman for the LAM museum in Lisse, western Netherlands, told AFP that artworks are often left in unusual places -- hence the display in a lift.

"We try to surprise the visitor all the time," she said.

Curator Elisah van den Bergh returned from a short break and noticed that the cans had vanished.

She recovered them from a bin bag just in the nick of time as they were about to be thrown out.

"We have now put the work in a more traditional place on a plinth so it can rest after its adventure," Budding told AFP.

She stressed there were "no hard feelings" towards the mechanic, who had just started at the museum.

"He was just doing his job," she said.

Sietske van Zanten, the museum's director, said: "Our art encourages visitors to see everyday objects in a new light."

"By displaying artworks in unexpected places, we amplify this experience and keep visitors on their toes," added Van Zanten.

With this in mind, the cans are unlikely to stay on their traditional plinth for long, said Budding.

"We need to think hard about a careful place to put them next," she told AFP.

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The 27-year-old -- real name Paul Mwangi -- has been building up a fanbase online and on the streets of Kenya with the one-of-a-kind deck that he put together himself.

It has even earned him slots at Uganda's Nyege Nyege festival, the largest in east Africa, and on the world-renowned club website Boiler Room.

But his favourite venue is Nairobi's bustling business district, where he set up on a recent Saturday among the stands of miraa (khat) vendors, the smell of grilled corn and the horns of matatus, the colourful minibuses of the Kenyan capital.

In a few minutes, dozens of curious onlookers had gathered, taking out their phones to film the amazing machine that spits out reggae hits.

The mixing desk consists of a spray-painted wooden board on which are screwed towel racks, switches and printed circuits connected in a tangle of cables -- all connected to an amp, speaker, and car battery.

He scratches using a slider made from a magnetised spoon between two towel hooks, and his fader is cobbled together from a plastic bottle cap.

Fixes are done without breaking the flow -- at one point, DJ Boboss whips out a screwdriver, strips a wire with his teeth and repairs a fault while the music keeps playing.

- 'Make my own' -

"I've never seen anything like that in the world," smiled David Meshack, who works in a nearby electronics store that sells professional turntables.

"One day, a customer came in with a photo of it. He wanted the same one but I didn't know what it was," he said. "Today, I see it!"

Boboss is an acronym for "Be your own boss" and Mwangi got his start repairing radios.

"My dad bought me a radio. After some time it stopped 'talking' and he said he wouldn't buy another one. I was stressed because I was addicted to music and listening to radio, so I just opened it using a knife," he said.

Soon he was repairing electronic devices in his village near Meru in central Kenya.

Then one day he saw a DJ in a bar and was inspired.

"I loved how he played music and the way the crowd reacted. I didn't have the money to buy real equipment but I said I could make my own with the available resources."

Mwangi moved to the capital and now makes a living from his DJing and occasionally selling specially-commissioned turntables.

His favourite venue is the street, especially in the business district or at Gikomba, the largest second-hand clothing market in the country.

"Street shows is a special feeling, you have a contact with the people. Many people have never seen a DJ mixing live," he said.

Among the onlookers, 48-year-old ex-soldier Zachary Mibei said he loved how Mwangi illustrates the situation for young people in Kenya.

"He has no training, it's all homemade, he is showing that he has something in him. He is telling us: 'I can do it by myself'," said Mibei.

Boboss admits it is probably time for a more advanced turntable with a few extra functions, but does not plan to part with the one which has made him famous.

"We could combine both and see what we can do with them," he smiled.

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An astronaut, a self-portrait, a bespectacled panda and seven other pictures burst into life from her brush, painted on 10 canvasses laid out on a table, upside-down on the floor, and two easels.

It started as a party trick for the curly-haired Rajacenna -- her artist name -- who wanted a challenge to relieve her boredom.

But it has since become a profession that has shot her to viral fame, with every paint stroke worked out in advance in her head before setting to work with hands -- and feet.

"I work a bit on one canvas, then move to another one, so I'm always dividing my attention between them," said Rajacenna, who is technically left-handed.

"Five years ago, I started painting with both hands, as a bit of a challenge and to go quicker. I discovered I was ambidextrous," the 31-year-old artist told AFP.

Then a journalist asked her as a joke whether she could also use her feet as well. Challenge accepted.

Starting out "for fun" and after a few mishaps with sticky tape between her toes, she tried using plasticine to keep the brush between her toes.

It was a success and she posted a video of her exploits online, quickly becoming a viral hit. Orders flooded in.

She is so skilled that only she can tell the difference between paintings crafted with her hands and those with her feet.

"I can really see a big difference. It's a bit less precise," she said, performing her skills at a museum in Vlaardingen, her home town in the south of the Netherlands.

- 'Very special' -

Rajacenna has loved drawing since she was a small child. After a short adolescent dip in interest, her passion was rekindled by an Italian street artist.

Today her videos on social media attract millions of views, especially when she paints 10 canvasses at a time with her hands and feet.

"I get bored quite quickly, so I like to challenge myself. Doing all this at the same time gives me a sort of feeling of meditation, which calms me a lot," she told AFP.

To her knowledge, she is the only person capable of such a feat.

"But I hope that people will be inspired to do more things, to challenge themselves a bit more, to do things like paint with their feet," she said.

Her paintings sell for between 6,000 and 12,000 euros ($6,450 to $12,900), according to her father Jaco van Dam.

"It's also very special for us as parents. She surprises us too and I don't know either how she manages to do it," he told AFP.

But a study on her brain by a Turkish-German neurologist Onur Gunturkun provides a clue, he added.

"A brain scan showed that the left and right sides of her brain are three times more connected than average," he said.

Neurologist Gunturkun has said Rajacenna was "capable of things that neuroscience deems impossible".

In a nod to Albert Einstein, whose brain was famously removed after his death, a painting of the scientist by Rajacenna hangs on the wall of the museum.

Rajacenna has attracted some famous admirers, notably pop star Justin Bieber, who described her work as "amazing" when she presented him with a portrait of himself.

It certainly impressed a couple of pensioners watching her at the museum.

"It's extraordinary that someone can do that," said Anton van Weelden, 75.

"What's more, the paintings are very beautiful and realistic," said Van Weelden, who said he would never dare try something like that.

"I couldn't even paint like that with my right hand," he joked.

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