Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/21/stranded-in-japan-an-unforget.html
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That is a sweet story, the world needs more reminders of our basic goodness.
Thank you japanese man, wherever you are. Thanks to the retelling of your act of kindness we now all got to ride in your cab i just for a moment in our minds.
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I had something similar happen once. A friend of mine and I had missed the last train home due to drama, so we took the 5:30am from Nagoya to Seto. However, no buses were coming for several hours to take us back to the dorms, so we started hoofing the ~10-11 miles or so from the last train stop in Seto.
About 5 miles into a very hot and sweaty Sunday morning hike, a gentleman pulls over in his car and in completely flawless English says, “Hey you guys wanna ride?”.
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A somewhat similar story, worth the read, is “The Week My Husband Left And My House Was Burgled I Secured A Grant To Begin The Project That Became BRCA1” by Dr Mary-Claire King.
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A similar story: I was in Northern Japan with nothing to do on a snowy Saturday so I went geocaching. I made a waypoint at my hotel and proceeded to ramble all over the place. Then something happened that I had not planned for - my GPS died.
I had wandered for hours and had no real sense of direction to get back to my hotel and spoke no Japanese. I spotted a large intersection ahead so I walked there hoping to find someone who could understand me enough to point me in the right direction.
I asked numerous people but they politely could not help until one young man seemed to understand. He lightly grabbed both of my arms and indicated I should just wait right there. Then I saw him walk around the intersection talking to everyone he met until he brought an elderly couple to me. They bowed to me and started walking away. The young man gestured that I should follow them.
We walked for over a mile on the snow until we arrived at my hotel.
I tried to thank them muttering my mangled “domo arigato” and they just smiled, bowed, and walked back in the direction they came.
It was like they had nothing better to do that day than to trudge for over 2 miles in the snow to help a stranger.
Japan is a lovely place with lovely people and an amazing and interesting culture. Go if you ever have the chance.
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Something similar happened to me as a teen. I was in Japan with a buddhist group, and three of us decided to skip out and look for a store to buy video games to bring back to the US. Well, we got to where we needed to, but had a tough time figuring out which train stop would let us off near our hotel.
Some random guy on the train saw that we were having trouble figuring out where to go, and in very broken english (because our japanese was even worse) told us that our stop was two past his, so when we saw him get off, we should wait two stops then get off. Sounded good, but we were a bit concerned looking I guess, so he rode with us to our stop, and rushed us off the train there.
When asked “didn’t you miss your stop?” He told us that he’d just ride the full loop and get off at his stop the next time around.
I don’t want to know how much extra time that took him (and he looked to be on his way home from work).
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That was fantastic. I’m so glad you posted it here!
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