Building Karma

I'd just like to say that today was bloody aweful. The humidity was horrid and everyone was grumpy and pushy and, well, summer is here. Ugh.

Tonight as I was coming home I saw three lost-looking young people in the station. I asked them where they were going and it turns out their hotel was on one of the private subway lines. So, I was a good samaritan and walked them to the station - only I went down the wrong stairwell. The stairwell I went down only connected to one subway line, not all of them. There is a big underground corridor system connecting all the subways - except at the entrance I went into. So the poor kids (they were like 20 I assume, which is really young to me now) had to lug their giant bags up the stairs, in the aforementioned disgusting heat and humidity.

When I first came to Japan, figuring out the trains was a nightmare. Japanese people are wonderful for helping foreigners who look lost, and there were numerous times when someone went out of their way to escort me somewhere, or take me to a platform, or even ride with me in the totally opposite direction that they were going. So I figured, it was my turn to give back, and I rode with the three travellers, who were from Switzerland, to their stop.

Actually, in a way it was lucky, because their hotel was in Shiba-koen, but Shiba-koen station was not the closest station to their hotel. So we had to backtrack one stop. I waved them out of the station and hopefully they got to their hotel ok. There was a sign at the ticket gates for their hotel, so I figure their were probably directions, or most likely a huge neon sign, somewhere.

So my good deed done I went home. I figure this was an especially kind deed because I am coming down with a cold and am all congested and can't breath. I had just wanted to go home to bed. As it was I got my workout running up and down station stairwells (Tokyo is about the least accessible friendly place on the planet - you know, pick your wheelchair or walker up and throw it down the stairs kind of place). I was glad to have helped people get around though.

I'm hoping that I'm building up karma for when we start travelling(I told Hiroshi he had to start helping lost foreigners too). I'm sure we'll be lost plenty of times! Of course, I might just be making up the karma deficit at the moment LOL