The K Experience

No, I wasn't pointing a gun at her or holding up her shop, she was just reacting to the camera that I had in her face. Wada San was one of the lovely people I met in Japan, and is living proof that you can find unsuspected kindness in the strangest of places. Not Japan, her store...

If this lady was the only person I had met during my stay, my time would not have been in vein.

Wada San owned a figurine store, about a minutes walk from my apartment. About 3 weeks into my stay in Japan I stumbled into her store out of curiousity, and was attacked by her hospitality. She sat me down fed me salmon and tomatoes, and talked to me for about half an hour. My Japanese was terrible as was her English, but we were able to communicate. She fast became my favourite local.

Her store had the most bizarre collection of toys, figurines, and random stuff I had ever seen in one place at one time. It was truly amazing. Goodness knows what it was doing in the middle of nowhere.

Every so often I would go into her shop for a little chat about life and random stuff like that. I remember having a chat to the assistant who worked there, a young guy who looked no older than 16, who turned out to be a graduate of the highschool where I was teaching at the time, Futagami, Technical High School. He said he wanted to be a train track engineer or something, or maybe he was already...I don't know.

The most interesting thing she told me was of how she once saw a red London bus on the streets of Toyama. Goodness knows what it was doing there, but that is what she said. Her story, if I remember correctly, was that it was some kind of tour, or something, of things British and London...ish, and the bus was just one of the many things that was being paraded around Japan. This according to her was way back in the 60's. Mind you considering my Japanese at the time, she could have been saying anything.

Anyway, she was great, and so on every little trip I went on I would always try and bring something back for Wada San, try being the operative word here.

The picture of Wada San was taken on my last day of the Jet Programme, just before I left Takaoka.

Wada San あなたの親切のことを本当にありがとうございました。

Picture of routemaster taken from Reuters.

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xuehong |02-20-2008 14:51:04 It's the little things and ordinary people like her that makes this world a place worth living! Reply | Quote

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