Cultural Differences

I was warned there was a lot of adjustment to living in Tokyo.  Actually, I was warned my family might not be flexible enough to survive.  Not sure that was encouraging.  You meet people here who have different approaches to learning to live in Japan.  There are the ones who hate the place and see only the bad:  the constant congestion, the weird food, the guy who bumped into them on the escalator in the subway and didn't apologize, the way things are done so backwards from "at home."  We all have bad days, but in the long-term that view seems exhausting.  There's the group that want to be locals, and almost pathologically avoid eye contact and recognition of anyone not native-Japanese.  (Dude, you're a six foot tall white guy with a blond ponytail.  You aren't ever going to blend.) And then there are the ones who generally look for the good. They see the incredible work ethic, the love of beauty and nature, the respect for elders and general polite manners.

One evening my friend had a knock on her door and a delivery guy stood on her step, his scooter parked on the curb.  He asked her, "Is this yours?" She peered around him to see a tiny little old man, bent over at the waist and clutching the railing of her front porch to try to stay on his feet. The delivery guy explained he had been passing and saw the old man hunched there, and wondered what was the matter.  My friend didn't know the old man, and as she and the delivery guy tried to question him, they learned he had been walking to the store and couldn't remember his way home.  The delivery guy apologized profusely but said he had to leave to go back to work, and left my friend with three little girls in the house and one stranger on the stoop.  She crouched so she could look in the man's face, and asked if she could call someone, or would he please at least sit down?  He refused, saying, "I might not get back up. I just need to get home to my daughter. Can you hold my arm and help me walk there?"  Besides being alone with her little children, she was afraid to start down the street with a man who might collapse at any moment.  Then what would she do?

After a few minutes' thought she called the little corner koban (police station) and explained the situation.  They said they would send someone right over.  She was so relieved, because the old man was getting more and more unsteady, and still refusing to sit.  Let the police load him in their car and drive him around to find his home.  Sure enough, within a short time here came a policeman--on his bicycle.

There was the moment.  What do you see?  Ridiculous Japanese and their stupid bicycles, can't get anything right?

The policeman squatted down in front of the the old man and said, "Grandfather, what can I do?"  Hearing the old man's story, he reassured, "We'll get you home."  Abandoning his bicycle, that policeman got down on his hands and knees on the pavement, hoisted the little old man onto his back, and staggered to his feet to carry him home. My friend's last sight of them was the policeman trotting off down the street with the old man perched on his back and clutching at his neck.

Some time later there came another knock at the door, the policeman returning to let her know they had found the right home and the anxious daughter.  The old man had been missing for hours.  He had walked to the combini (convenience store) a couple blocks from their home, as he did almost every day with his granddaughter, but this time he went alone and got turned around.  He had been wandering the neighborhood ever since, trying to find the right street, until he couldn't go on any longer and finally stood clutching my friend's railing, exhausted.  The policeman picked up his bicycle, and after a polite bow climbed on to return to the koban.

That's the Japan I want to see.