kipple.info

Travelling many countries it is easy to receive a bad impression of a country by encountering locals who take advantage of tourists. In India, scams seem common because the 1% of the people who participate in scams actively pursue their targets. In Japan, it is hard to imagine that any type of scamming even goes on. The generosity and willingness to help I have personally received from the Japanese is astonishing.

When I went for lunch at a tempura restaurant in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, I was seated with a Japanese man who helped me to decipher the menu. In halting sentences we were able to communicate where each of us had come from and a little bit of our family lives. By the end of the meal, the man insisted he would pay for both of us.

Having arrived in Kumamoto, I was eager to try the local beef speciality known as higo-gyu. The brochures and guide books all mentioned this food but did not list any restaurants. I walked into a random restaurant to inquire if they served higo-gyu. When they replied negatively (and apologetically), I asked if there was a restaurant nearby which served this delicacy. Two of the waitresses started searching the yellow pages. One waiter started skimming some of the local food magazines. Two of the cooks came out of the kitchen and started calling around on their cell phones. The head waitress invited me in for a complimentary coffee. All of this, just to send me to a competitor!

I walked into a cafe with a Japanese friend of mine who engaged an older lady sitting nearby in conversation. The lady was in her 70’s and was very excited to meet someone from Canada. She asked both of us to sign her guest book. This woman turned out to be a master of Shoujo (Japanese calligraphy). She offered to create a scroll for me free of charge! Unfortunately, I was leaving the next day and a properly made scroll takes several days to create. The offer to invest so much time in a project for someone she had just met really underlines the generosity of the Japanese spirit.

Even the Japanese Inns I stayed at called ryokan insisted on sending me off with a gift or two. I was constantly amazed at how well I was treated no matter what the occasion. I knew that Japanese society valued politeness, but everyone I met went above and beyond expectations.

Having spent a month in Japan, the only negative experiences I came away with were a drunk man who was a little too eager to practice his English and a shopkeeper who would not make change for me unless I bought something from his store. These are minor trifles which would be part of every day life in every other country but stood out in contrast to all the other wonderful people I met on my visit to Japan.