Of late, I have kinda realised (again) why people say travel broadens your horizons. Having been rather stuck in Bangalore for the past two years or so, somehow the experience of the couple of years before that seemed to have gone a bit wishy washy, and diluted by our dear friend - Time.
And then, luckily, after a lot of begging, cajoling pleading and stuff, I was finally off to Tokyo! And boy, was the ride to there interesting. A hell lotta people told me it was hell. That if you are a veggie, like yours truly, its the pit of the fire in hell.
Thai Airways certainly made me feel that way. If there wasn’t enough apprehension about FOOD, they made sure, they fed(pun intended) the thoughts of starvation very well. The Thai Experience begs for another post, suffice to say, that the in-flight magazine is called “Sawasdee” - Thai for Namaste/Welcome - and the air crew made me feel anything but welcome.
Having travelled Thai all the way through, Japan, on hindsight should have been expected as a terrifying destination - but with the excitement of finally having gotten FAR, FAR away from India*, I didnt approach it with apprehension - more curiosity, I think.
And Japan, was one huge experience. It was humbling. It was entertaining, flattering (to deceive, occasionally), interesting - even humiliating a couple of times. On the whole, it was one awesome trip! The details of course will come up later - this post is about learning!
One of the first experiences in Japan, was getting out of our service apartment and searching for a department store - they call the smaller shops as “convenience store” (and pronounce it as conBenience store - like ‘em Bongs)
So we stopped a guy - and, he didnt know English. We were soon to learn that most people dont understand a word in English, not even Yes/No sometimes. We tried communicating in various ways until he realised we wanted a conbenience store - and we realised it was a convenience store. So the guy tried to direct us, and having failed to communicate, walked us, ALL the way to the store - asked if it was what we wanted, and bowed and went on his merry way! (The store wasnt really far, but still, a huge gesture!)
That was our first really opening to the Japanese world. Be helpful and polite! Boy!
2 days later, we got lost on the way to office. And we sought the help of this lady who happened to walk past. She spent something like 15 minutes trying to help us out - that we were lost got communicated easily, but not the directions to our place! heh! Finally, I happened to dig out the card of our Japanese colleague - and the lady called him up, got him to speak to us, made sure everything was alright and we would be taken care of (the Japanese colleague was coming to pick us up) and finally left - even apologised for not knowing english well!
It just blew our minds. There we were, strangers in the land, speaking strange lingo, and to face such politeness and courtesy! Damn! Oh oops!
Was a great lesson to me in being humble and helpful!
EEEE! 535 words…. looong post. I shall post the next thing I learnt in Japan later.
* I REALLLY LOVE MY COUNTRY, BUT I REALLLY LOVE TO TRAVEL TOO!