[floatr][/floatr]A construction company submitted a bid for some public works in Ako City, Hyogo prefecture but made an error in their application Instead of offering to do the job for 3,500,000 yen (三百五十万円), they omitted the "man" character and ended up offering to work for only 350 yen (三百五十円). The job is to clear a large area of roadside weeds which is expected to take several months. The company president told his agent to "bid 350" which he meant as a shorthand way of saying "350 man". The agent, however, thought that the bid was to be expressed as a price per square metre of roadside and so submitted 350 yen. Bids from rival construction companies covered a mysteriously narrow range from 3.5 million to 3.65 million so 350 yen was inevitably the best deal and the city took it. The construction company could have refused to honour the deal but they would have been excluded from taking part in any other municipal work and so have agreed to the bargain price.
(Japanese story here)