Obaachan

Once again I must say I love old people in Japan. They are so amazing!

Today at the train station an old man and woman started talking to me. Neither spoke a word of English, but I guess they were just extremely friendly individuals.

The lady wore a very fancy kimono, and she said she was 72 years old. She didn't give me her name, but kept referring to herself as "Obaachan" which means "Grandma". I haven't figured out yet why young people tend to call old people Grandmother or Grandfather when they are not related. It seems like a nice custom though. It's like we7re all one big happy family over here.

After talking with her for 5 mins another gaijin arrived. A 23 year old Russian girl that spoke better Japanese than me, but very little English.

This made for a very interesting train ride. Especially with the little old man trying to act as an interpreter for all of us even though he didn't speak English or Russian. He's great at charades though.

The old lady gave me a bzasket of strawberries for some reason. I wish I'd had a gift for her. All I could do was talk with her, and show her the pictures my students drew today. Maybe I should have given her one, she said they were cute.

What I learned:
1) The old lady once visited Ottawa, she loves Canada. She says we're very gentle people. She's afraid to go to Russia for some reason.

2) The Russian girl was in Japan to study Japanese, and apparently she's not doing very well.

3) The old man likes sports and kareoke.

The old lady said soemthing about the war, and how she was happy that everyone was coming together now. She used Russia, Canada, and Japan as her example because we were all together on the train talking like friends.

I can understand why she was so happy about this...at 72 now she would have been 11 when Hiroshima was bombed. So she can probably recall quite clearly when people like myself would not have been welcome here in Japan.

I wish I had some Canadian flag pins aside from the one I always wear. I'd like to have a gift of some kind to offer the next friendly old person I talk to.

Pictures from kids.

Picture from child.