NAGOYA -- Passengers on a subway line received an unexpected treat when an automatic ticket vending machine at a station here gave them more change than they were entitled to due to human error, local authorities said.

Large bills, including 10,000 yen and 5,000 yen notes, were mistakenly supplied into a ticket vending machine instead of 1,000 yen bills as change at Hisaya-Odori Station on the Nagoya municipal subway line last Friday, city officials said.

As a result of the error, passengers buying subway tickets got more change than they were entitled to from the ticket vending machine at the station in Nagoya's Naka-ku. The error cost the station 252,000 yen, city officials said.

The municipal government said the error apparently occurred due to a mistake by a 57-year-old assistant stationmaster who was in charge of supplying the machine with bills.

Ticket vending machines at the station cannot distinguish between 1,000 yen bills and larger notes, such as 10,000 yen and 5,000 yen bills, when the machine gives change to ticket buyers, according to officials.

The assistant stationmaster supplied the machine with larger bills at the station on Friday morning from a sack containing cash that had just been collected from ticket vending machines, instead of from a sack containing smaller bills for change.

At around 1:15 p.m. the same day, three station employees noticed that sales from the vending machine were lower than usual. The station also received a call from a passenger saying that extra change may have been paid.

It is unknown how many passengers received larger bills as change from the vending machine.

"It is the first time that we lost cash in this kind of manner," said a representative of the city's transportation bureau.

The assistant stationmaster was also puzzled by his error, saying, "I don't know why I made such a mistake."

After receiving a report from the city, local police are looking into whether they can press misappropriation charges against passengers who made off with the larger bills as change.

The city will examine how it will punish the assistant stationmaster and how it will reimburse the funds.

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