Social society

Another week draws to a close. I now have 3 weeks left of work. The time seems to be passing both quickly and slowly. Something to do with relativity I'm sure. I remembered this morning something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I was walking home from school on a gloomy day and it started to rain very very lightly. A car pulled up in front of me and a woman hopped out and began waving an umbrella at me "sensei, sensei, would you like an umbrella?" I had never met this woman before (that I can remember) but she clearly knew me, perhaps I teach one of her kids. I refused to take the umbrella because I had no way of returning it to her but I thought that it was a peculiarly kind gesture. How many people in Australia would see a teacher they recognise from their child's school and just offer them something like an umbrella! Perhaps it is a product of living in a small town, or perhaps the Japanese are just kinder to strangers than we are in Australia. I'd like to think not. But I do recall several occasions in Australia where I have been very disappointed with people's behaviour. For example once while running for a bus in Adelaide I watched a young woman struggle to get a stoller, an infant, a toddler and a large nappy bag up the steps. Those lined up behind her, mostly middle aged business men, simply stood and watched her looking impatient at being held up. I folded the stroller up for her and lifted it onto the bus (hence skipping the line :) and voila! problem solvered. Why are people so slow to just give a simple helping hand in situations like that?

There are of course other less desirable effects of living in a small town. While Miss BV was here we had the contents of our shopping bags assessed by a man working in the bottle-o. He decided we were having nabe by looking at the vegies we had purchased and when we contradicted him and said "no, Curry." He was all in amazement, "You put mushrooms in curry??" And generally made a big deal about the funny things gaijin will put in curry.