Lost?

Lost? Just ask a stranger. Of course, it helps if you speak ten words or so of Japanese, but if you don't, you should try anyway! It's amazing just how far people will go out of their way to help you if you're lost. Even if you're touristy-looking. For example, while in Tokyo, we wanted to head out in Shinjuku.



Unfortunately, it was our first time there, and we had next to no clue how to arrive at our destination. As such, we stood on the side of the sidewalk, and started to guess how much the people walking by knew about the area. We decided to stop two girls, one of them was in a school uniform. We thought, if she's in a school uniform, she must go to school around there and know the area. However, we had guessed incorrectly. The girls told us politely that they had no idea where we should go. We stood there a bit longer, and stopped a young guy walking by. We told him what we were looking for and he started to point in a direction.

Rather than let that be that, he took us to the nearest city map (usually they are pretty easily found around subway and train stations). Then, he plotted our route for us. But his courtesy didn't stop there. He said he would walk us at least part way there, since it wasn't out of his direction. He was totally being just nice at that point, because it was in fact the opposite way he had been walking. After about 8 to 12 minutes of walking, we made it there. He didn't just walk us part of the way. He walked us ALL the way there. We thanked him over and over and invited him to come sit and have a drink with us (we were on vacation after all). But he declined and left. Wow, how helpful was he??? And, by the way, the man in the photo is the one who helped. I can imagine someone from home spending a long 5 minutes explaining how to get somewhere, but I can't imagine someone from home actually walking there. I was impressed.

There have been other instances of people helping both of us find what we needed. But this case definitely stands out the most. Subarashi!