Right away I got to feel the courtesy, politeness, and altogether niceness of the people. Random strangers politely asked me – even in broken English – if they could help me with my suitcase, one of them a woman, and once a teenager actually carried it up an entire flight of stairs!
Once I was at Ueno park- a park kind of like Central Park but with many more museums – and after meandering through it for a few hours, I got lost a bit, and asked a lady to point me to the station so I could head back.
“Sumimasen. Station doko desuka?” , I asked in my pidgin Japanese.
She smiled and rattled off a whole sentence in Japanese that I did not understand, but she did point with her hands towards a direction, which I presumed to be that of the station, and so, after a number of Arigatos, I headed that way.
After a few minutes of walking, I felt a mild tap on my shoulder. I turned.
It was her again. Very apologetically she showed me a full message she had typed on her phone in a translator app: “ I have free time. Do you want to visit with me to the station?”
I was flummoxed for a bit, trying to make sense of the message, and then understood that she wanted to walk with me to the station to make sure that I found my way. I was so touched that she had yet been thinking of me, and had followed me to offer me more help.
Smiling and bowing, I answered “No, no, I am okay, thank you, arigato, arigato gozaimasu”. We waved, bowed once more, and went our separate ways. I saw her hurrying a bit towards the baseball stadium where a game had started.
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