A postman admitted he stockpiled 24,000 letters for years in his house because he thinks his job is too hard.
The 61-year-old man told the Japanese police "it was too much bother to deliver the items."
The authorities found thousands of undelivered letters in his house in the Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo.
The man kept the letters for years, but his action wasn't discovered until lately following an internal investigation carried out by the post company.
Efforts are being made to deliver all the delayed mails accompanied by an apology to each person who had to wait all this time to receive his letter or parcel.
In a similar case, a 47-year-old Argentinian postman, named Manuel Guterres, served a one year jail sentence in Patagonia after he was convicted of deliberately keeping letters.
In Guterres's house, the investigators found bags containing 19,000 undelivered letters with stamps, AFP reported.
The case took place in 2009, but, the final sentence wasn't announced until 2015, stipulating a suspended year of prison, after being convicted of "illegally keeping messages".