Kindness
It's just incredible. Something happens, on average, every day to make me think that this has to be the kindest culture the world has produced. I know I'm a foreigner so I get special treatment, but I see how they treat each other, and respect is even built into the language, just as it is in India. But, unlike India (at least how I felt sometimes), it's not subservient respect (at least in our current times it isn't, I know some Japanese history), but a "I respect you because your a fellow human being" type of respect. "O shiawase ni", shiwase means happy so something like "please remain happy!" - imagine in America saying casually to someone you met recently, "I hope you remain happy for the rest of today!" as you guys parted. The person would turn and run in the other direction, thinking "who is this freak?" It's just not in our (my - American) culture. I'm not saying I haven't met ridiculously kind and giving people in America, God knows He has blessed me with friends who set the bar, but you gotta admit, you're afraid to give in America for fear of being a sucker in the end. Maybe it's my own immaturity. But I love it here, meeting people whose kindness make my day, help me to be a better person, and just in general let me be a happy human being. Kind, that's all I want people to be, I don't think I need much more from them than that. I don't care if you're perfect, just as long as you aren't this big ball of selfishness.
I'm not trying to over-sweat Japan; though I obviously sweat it a little because I came here - but it's just amazing, something happens every day where people go far out of their way to help me with whatever. They actually like to give. I think Asian cultures in general have more respect and kindness built into their language, India definitely does. Of course, I do have the omnipresent foreigner identity here. Once again, I wonder what it would be like to be Japanese.
I'll remember these things the most fondly once I leave. What inspired the post today waaaas...hghuuuuuh, deep breath; the guy on the train who helped me get home, the owner of the local sushi bar's father who saw me carrying the tripod I just bought along with a camera case and was carrying home and we started talking about photography and he asked asked me if I wanted to see his pictures and it turns out he's this ridicuously amazing photographer and his artwork is actually hanging in my elementary school and junior high school and all over agematsu and he let me take home 5 if his photographs that I want to put up right now because they're so amazing but first I want to frame them because they are so nice and I don't want any dust to get on them he even had these amazing photographs of china and Mt Fuji and they're old because he's 91 and so they're like priceless classics I even have a picture with two models in it and it looks like the fifties that's gotta be a classic he also has tons of other antiques (like 20 cameras including a pentax that looks like a boxc and a german camera that weighs 10 pounds at least) and if he watched antiques roadshow in the U.S. he's be a millionare and I should tell him that and he ended up saying I could take home as many photographs as I want (he started at 3) but I just couldn't so I took five :) and then after that I got a ride home from somebody else who saw me walking and who invited me over their house for dinner two nights ago and I had a 6 course meal with him and his wife who of course packed me lunch for the next day as well as two free t-shirts why didn't I bring more omiyage (gifts) from home for the people here!!!...that inspired me to write this post.
Can't wait to put up my photographs. The apartment may start finally feeling like MY place!
-Rishi
posted by Rishi Sidhu @ 3:52 AM
5 Comments:
but americans casually say to each other "what's up?", a phrase of kindness that can only be interpreted as... i respect you so much as a human being that i want to know what's going on with you.
Although you'll find kind souls wherever you go, I have to agree with you in saying that the Japanese seem to take it to another level. When I was in Tokyo 2 years ago with Moon, we were on Odaiba island and didn't know how to get back to the downtown district. It was pretty late at night, and we were waiting at a bus stop for a bus that seemed to no longer be in service. Then, two young mothers passed by, each pushing a stroller with a baby inside, and we stopped them to ask for help. We spoke no Japanese and they spoke no English, but when we made clear that we wanted to go to Hamamatsucho, they thought for a moment and pointed to a monorail passing overhead. When we shrugged our shoulders, they looked at each other and then proceeded to walk us all the way to the nearest monorail station, which turned out to be 20 minutes away in the opposite direction of where they were headed. And they didn't stop after we arrived at the station. The two mothers actually carried their babies and heavy strollers up the long escalators and took us to the ticket window where they explained our situation to the man behind the counter. They then stood next to us to make sure we bought the correct tickets and then repeatedly asked "dai zhobu deska?" (which meant "are you ok?") until we finally convinced them that we knew how to get home from there.
Moon and I were so touched that we recounted the story to everyone back home. Those two mothers had every reason not to help us: it was a time of night when it could be dangerous for young women to be walking by themselves, they had infants, and we couldn't communicate. At most, they could've just pointed us in the direction of the station or drawn a map for us. This event gave me a very positive first impression of Japanese kindness, but Rishi your experiences now make me think that this sort of behavior is more common among the Japanese than I first believed.
I would love to meet that guy. 91! you've met a legend rishi...
john's story is pretty amazing too... in america we're so intent on time-is-money time-is-money time-is-money that even when we do have time to do absolutely nothing and are not making any money from it whatsoever, we still feel like somehow we could be making money from it even though we are doing absolutely nothing.
Wow, you didnt leave a single space for breath in that last paragraph. hahaha. I am glad you are having such a great time and it sounds like people there are absolutely AMAZING. Now if just Gemrans could learn some of that. hahahah. Might help with the general uptightness of the country.
PS. Thanks for your comments, i love how you responded HAHAHAHHAHAHA to my very bad bus stop dilemma. lol. take care hon!
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