Random acts of kindness

Random acts of kindness

The days are full of reasons to be thankful, the first is that I'm alive and with Emi. Although once in a while she will ask me if I love her sort of as a joke. She asks me her question when I'm suffering and maybe not in the best of mood, which happens to be most of the time. My instantaneous reply is “Later, later. Ask me later,” or here in Japan ”Ato de, ato de or else you might not like my response.” And later it is different, and I am again thankful for her, and then there are the other reasons to be thankful.

For example, starting this morning the surfing minshuku owner, Ten, gave us a bento of spam musubi as a gift, not to mention the glass of shochu he gave me during the night. He also gave us a charm for something that Emi forgot the reason but I will assume to be for good luck; we always need luck. We then took pictures of each other and I told him that I would send him ukulele links, and then with one last shout of “aloha” from the owner we were off for the day.

Then while walking through a small town, Emi had to use the bathroom, and so she asked the local barber. Why not, huh? He replied that the bathroom at the shop wasn't clean enough, so he took Emi to his house close by and left her there so that she could use the bathroom while he went back to the shop. The trust that exists here is unreal. I could go on and on about that subject and I will another day, but for now let me say it too was a complete random act of kindness.

Next, while stopping to cut Emi's new boots to allow more room for her blistered toes, a man who was across the narrow street attending to his potted plants, quietly told his wife to prepare something for us, and so she did, but it was she who called us in for coffee and pastries. And then again it was the husband who told her to offer us honey, and so she did. She made it a point to tell us don't enryo, hold back, so we put the honey on our pastries as if they were merely an excuse to eat the honey. Our middle name became Winnie the Pooh. We couldn't refuse her and her husband's generosity. The husband was a man after my own heart. Their home was humble but their actions so rich.

And it still astounds me how the majority of people that you meet, young and old, walking, sitting, working, or in a car, on a bike, or standing by their house say hello. It is the one and only time I can reply like a real Nihonjin. All I have to do is repeat what they say. I can't say much but I can repeat single words.