Returning to the Japanese Bow

And I'm back in Japan.  I write as I ride the Salad Express bus after a delayed flight out of Taipei.  We got here later than expected and I'm not sure if the city buses will still be running for me to take back home.  If not, it's going to be a luxurious taxi ride.  Maybe I'll stop at the convenient store and grab a bottle of wine to share with the driver, just so that we are both fully enjoying the fare.  The unexpected and unpredictable in travel and what it will require to amend can be stressful.  Or, I suppose, not.  I may as well enjoy the dancing tomatoes riding beneath me for the time being.  

And the recent memory, not 10 minutes old, of the luggage handler at the bus stop.  After two flights of chaotic queuing to board, zones disregarded, place in line ignored, I got to the bus stop at the Kansai airport and basked in the busy-ness of the the gentleman luggage handler.  He groomed our lines like an expert sheep herder, nipping at our heels with his gentle bows and guiding gloved hands.  He moved us closer together, organizing luggage between us, ensuring that each person was in the proper line for their destination.  When the bus came, the luggage was quickly put underneath, we boarded, and as expected, the instant the digital clock changed to 10:10, he looked to the driver and said, "Onegaishimas (if you please (it's time))," and bowed to him.  The driver then shut the door, and the luggage handler bowed again to the whole bus, a deep bow, until it started to drive away.  

My brother says this type of courtesy is over the top.  And maybe so.  But it paused my evening of stressful travel to see a person take a moment to give this sign of routine respect.  He broke his own personal sense of duty, his own seemingly compulsive concern of the tidiness of the other line and its luggage, in order to give us this bow.  And it opened a bow inside of me.  A reminder that our lives are serving a bigger purpose than our concerns might lead us to believe.  It's so hard to see this, to feel it at the end of long day, in the midst of uncertainty, at the time of any number of given challenges that we experience from the outside world and through which we put ourselves.  It can be hard to tell the difference, there real source of our challenges.

It was wonderful to get a taste of more of Asia.  Not only to be in another country, but to experience more of the diversity of the people on this continent; both those that lived there and those that joined me in my temporary tourist activities.  I feel very thankful to have Japan as my Asian home and I'm happy to return to it.  This way of living is something wonderful in which to be immersed, even if I know more and more that I'm calibrated as an American- I rejoice in that identity the more I see and experience.   America is my home, it's where I'm from, it's my upbringing.  But so too, is Japan becoming more and more my home.  And so too, do I feel great gratitude for the things that Japan is teaching me.  I hope they seep into me like my Americanness.  I hope I take them with me when I go.