Ariel Winton-Jones, an American lady traveling throughout Japan, claims she misplaced her engagement ring in Tokyo last week and assumed it was gone forever.

The ring was returned within two days, much to Winton-Jones’ astonishment, owing to strangers on social media, the compassion of the Japanese population, and the city’s unique lost and found system.

Winton-Jones, 29, told Insider on Tuesday that she and her husband, Kevin, reside in Boston and are presently on a 12-day tour throughout Japan to celebrate Kevin’s 30th birthday. They discovered the ring was gone the day after they arrived in Tokyo, on May 23, shortly after attending an early morning workout session.

Later that day, Winton-Jones asked on TikTok and Twitter whether anyone in Tokyo had seen the ring.

Winton-Jones added that the ring was meaningful since it included the same diamond that her father used to propose to her mother. Three months before Winton-Jones’ wedding in October 2021, her father died unexpectedly.

Winton-Jones told Insider she felt “paralyzed and numb” after learning she’d lost it, comparing the sensation to “the early days of grief.”

“I couldn’t snap out of it,” she said. “It’s by far the most important material object I’ve left behind from him, so it sucked.”

Winton-Jones stated that she and Kevin quickly retraced their steps and inquired of staff at nearby shops, railway stations, and the hotel where they were staying if they had seen the ring. They also distributed fliers with pictures of the ring.

When they discovered no one had found it, Winton-Jones decided to make an appeal on TikTok despite having never uploaded anything on the platform before.

“I saw videos on TikTok where people would say, ‘I met this guy; help me find him.'” Perhaps I can do the same for my ring. “It seemed kind of ridiculous because I don’t have a TikTok following,” she explained.

She claimed she awoke the next morning to several comments from individuals online encouraging her to keep looking for the ring, while others educated her about Tokyo’s unique lost and found system and pushed her to put out a lost item report.

According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s website, people who lose personal things are asked to fill out a lost property form and bring it to a police station or complete it online. If an item is discovered, the person who listed it will be notified using the information they supplied in the original form, or they may check online using the police’s official database, according to the website.

The couple received a call at their hotel two days after the ring went missing, notifying them that the ring had been turned in to a police station after being discovered at Tokyo Station.

Full story here: https://t.co/iYx1qPBqqC

— Ariel Winton-Jones (@arielrwinton) May 23, 2023

According to Winton-Jones, the police were able to identify the discovered ring using the information she supplied in the lost property report as well as the photo of the ring on the flyer.

“A lot of Japanese people have commented on my Twitter post, saying they are taught from a young age to bring items to the police, which I don’t think is a thing in the States,” Winton-Jones said, adding that if she had lost the ring in the US, she wouldn’t have expected to ever get it back.

“Is that a diamond ring?” “They’d just take it home and sell it,” she explained.

In addition to touring, Winton-Jones said she is now working on promoting the Gregory S. Winton, Esq. Scholarship, which is named after her father, a pilot and flight instructor.