18.7.08

Service culture

So last week my white friend and I were walking into Starbucks in Akihabara, when an old man stumbled by us, veered strangely off course, and fell face-first into the rather stone corner of the nearest building. Dan and I naturally rushed over to help, at the time or shortly after I said Oh shit!. We and another passerby, this one Japanese, helped the guy up, who explained that he'd been drinking too much. I tried to get the guy to take a seat and figure out where he lived.

This is the interesting part: the man was Japanese. The third party who stopped to help out was Japanese. The woman who stopped to help about now was also Japanese. But as I was asking the old man where he lived, and as he looked at me, not understanding, the other two Japanese asked him where he lived in English. Several times. Until Dan asked him in Japanese, at which point the old man answered.

This is the cool part: he was from Moriya. And so was the helper-woman. And me too, if I haven't mentioned it in awhile. Moriya's a random town two prefectures away with a population of 57,000, give or take. Akihabara's in the middle of Tokyo.

Small world. And a strange one that'd accommodate two healthy young foreigners before an old citizen with blood welling from his noggin.

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