Japanese Experiences .....

Today I went for a small excursion north ish of the city to a shop called Paper Nao - a beautiful shop that sells beautiful hand made paper - washi paper, mulberry paper and other papers, such as paper hand dyed with natural dyes. This was recommended to me by a friend. I purchased some paper there and some inks which is exciting. It is essentially Japanese I would say (which is perfect I think, anyway).

On my way to this beautiful shop I travelled on the subway and was watching for the right station and an small older Japanese man, who looked educated, asked me in sign language, if I needed help. He got off the train with me, breaking his own journey. He very sweetly walked with me the whole way to the Paper Nao shop, which was about 400 metres from the railway station. I was fine actually, and knew the way once out of the station as I had researched it all, but he insisted taking me and kept asking directions from others along the way. He was satisfied when I was inside the shop and shook my hand and we bowed to each other, saying thank you (me anyway).

I have found this attitude all the time with Japanese people - really going out of their way to be helpful and not stopping until they have done their best or solved the problem. Yesterday, a little old woman and her three friends sat beside me while I was waiting to catch the train to Nagoya - out of the blue the grey haired lady asked me where I was going, I showed her my ticket which showed Nagoya and No 514, she was very happy telling me they were going on the same train. She gave me a chocolate lolly which I thanked her for (arigato) and put it in my bag, in case it contained dairy products. She must have noticed this, as she then offered me a mint with coconut flavouring. I ate this straight away which must have satisfied her. When I got out of the train at Nagoya they all turned around and waved goodbye to me for ages - they were so sweet. These are just two instances of lots of acts of kindness I have experienced from young and old Japanese peoples.

My fellow Japanese students might like to figure out these signs and what they say ....two are obvious

This one below was at the Shibori Museum and is self explanatory: