MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- Being a Marine in a foreign country can have many disadvantages. You don't speak the language, and traveling becomes an adventure in itself. What you don't expect though is for your foreign hosts to treat you better than your own country does.
I recently embarked on a trip that brought me and a few of my friends a great distance from the Station. On our return home we ran into a blizzard that caused us to drive in the wrong direction and ultimately become seriously lost.
Now I've been in this situation quite a few times before. I remember once back in the states when I was just a young boy traveling with my mom and three younger sisters. We had been driving to Virginia from Florida, and we had a flat tire with no spare to change it with. Nobody stopped, not a soul called for help, my fellow Americans just speed by, too busy to help a young family in need.
However, in the midst of my recent dilemma and to my everlasting surprise, a car actually stopped to help us. It was a little old Japanese lady headed home after a long day at work who saw four young men on a desolate road at night. This mysterious women communicated with us as best she could and understood our predicament and motioned for us to follow her. Approximately a tank of gas later, we realized she had led us to a highway which would take us straight back to Iwakuni.
Right before our hero took off into the night, we tried to thank her, but she just shook her head and smiled as if her going completely out of her way was just a simple gesture of hospitality.
Never in my life had I seen such a thing. An actual human being doing something nice for someone else and not even asking for anything in return, it just didn't make any sense to me. It occurred to me that maybe this is just the way Japanese people are.
Unlike their American counterparts, Japanese people see someone in need and they just want to help. They don't have ulterior motives behind their actions.
Now maybe the problem with America is a fear that lies within many people to not get out of their car. With killers and carjackers lurking about I can't blame them. But I believe that's only part of the problem. The truth of the matter is Japanese hospitality blows Amer-ica's out of the water.
In the "Land of the Free" we are so free we don't have to be concerned with the well being of anyone's safety, but our own. I am just glad I didn't get lost in a blizzard in the states, because I still might be driving.