Japanese People - Helpfulness and Friendliness

When in Japan – one thing that we always had at hand was - Help. All we had to do was give a hint or ask for it -

Sumimasen (Excuse me), Can you please help me locate this place ...?

And there it would come, with such warm smiles and such loving kindheartedness that it instantly struck a chord in our heart – right from day one.  So here are some moments we managed to capture while our stay in Japan so that we could show you the people who never did let us feel strange in an alien land and were right there whenever we needed them.

Politeness and Helpfulness in Japan

Our introduction with the courteousness in Japan began from the first day itself, in fact moments after stepping into the country.

We were looking out for our hotel in Tokyo, when this boy came to our rescue. Not only did he give us the directions but sensing that they were a bit confusing for us, left his own track to escort and guide us on our way.

This man had no idea of what we were searching for and where it was

but that in no way was a reason enough to make him pull out of the scene.

He told us to wait, ran across towards his car parked half a km away,

got a large map book and flipped through its pages

till he had enough information to help us out.

Come to think of it, this was just the beginning of all the kindness that was to come. In the days to follow, we met so many people like these on the go and all of them helped us out in some way or the other, many times leaving their own works for ours.

So there was the subway office lady who came out of her cubicle to help us get a ticket, the bullet train booking staff ‘Midori ni Midogachi’ who left his seat so that he could return my camera that I, in my excitement to book my first bullet train ticket, had forgotten in his cabin, the man who left his own metro train just so that he could help us catch ours, the lady who got out of her way to help us get out of the confusing subway network, all my Nara blogger friends who opened their hearts out for one of their virtual blogfriends of a few odd months and... there were many more.

We communicated with all of them, their voices coming straight from the soul; we connected with each one of them, their sounds uniting the strings in our hearts.

Their humility, their friendliness, their genuine eagerness to help

... flavored our senses,

Their smiles, their glowing faces, the twinkle in their eyes

...touched our souls...