Though not common, I have experience of getting surrounded by kids two times so far. Yesterday was the second of such incident happened. The first incident was on July 2008. I thought of sharing this experience here as it was an interesting experience.
Those kids must be below the age of 7. I was walking on a lonely road at Kiba that lead to the Tozai line railway station. On the way back to home is the time when thoughts of the past try to prevail on the routine work related stress. I found this revisiting childhood days effective to control day to day negative experiences if any, by refreshment.
A tree with deep roots may withstand a heavy storm. It is always the tree that do not have deep roots deracinate in storm. Travelling through forgotten roots rejuvenate and makes them adept to survive tempests.
Yesterday there were 4 kids trying to walk up with my speed of walking, all of them in a celebrating mood as if they have found a new creature from another planet! Those Japanese kids were almost dancing around me. I could hear some words like “Kono hito…” and somewhere in between a sound similar to “gaikokujin”. In total I understood that they were happy to see a foreigner on the street.
Hey, that will be interesting! I should not shout at them to go away like we do to dogs. They are kids and won’t do any harm. This situation might have turned little bit embarrassing to me had it been happened in a crowded place. The road was almost empty but I could see two Japanese women back to the kids when looked back. They were calling the kids, probably to stop running behind me. One of the women ran to catch the kids. When she reached near to me, she said sorry for all the things happened.
She got two kids at her hand but one of them was interested to touch me! She again told so many excuses in Japanese and was almost like getting angry towards the kids for their play. I tried to convey her in my broken Japanese not to scold the kids. It is quite natural for kids to get excitement by seeing a foreigner. I looked different to them from other people whom they daily see. Even though Asians, Indians have different physical figure from East Asians.
I could enjoy the excitement of Japanese kids on the road. Walking away towards the station by saying sayonara to the kids, I was thinking similar scenes when along with my younger brother I walked behind the ISCON group when they camped at a temple in the village near to our home. We saw many white skin people and got excited to talk with them. We did not know what to talk. We guessed they were from America. ISCON were getting a kind of popularity at that time. My brother and I targeted a white man, who showed interest in us with a smiling face when we walked near to him.
When the ISCON group camped near the temple, we approached him but feared to talk with him. He called us near to him and asked our name and about our school. He was surprised to see us replying in English to his queries, because English is not our mother tongue, but still student in villages in India could manage to talk in his language. He gave us sweets from his bag.
We were very thrilled by talking to that American man. Is it not that same kind of feeling yesterday those Japanese kids experienced? Astonishment in seeing somebody different from them, touching a foreigner, talking with a foreigner…….for kids and why even for many of the adults these are kind of different experiences.
And that is what the life is: a collection of different experiences here and there in a chain of repetitive similar experiences.
Those kids must be below the age of 7. I was walking on a lonely road at Kiba that lead to the Tozai line railway station. On the way back to home is the time when thoughts of the past try to prevail on the routine work related stress. I found this revisiting childhood days effective to control day to day negative experiences if any, by refreshment.
A tree with deep roots may withstand a heavy storm. It is always the tree that do not have deep roots deracinate in storm. Travelling through forgotten roots rejuvenate and makes them adept to survive tempests.
Yesterday there were 4 kids trying to walk up with my speed of walking, all of them in a celebrating mood as if they have found a new creature from another planet! Those Japanese kids were almost dancing around me. I could hear some words like “Kono hito…” and somewhere in between a sound similar to “gaikokujin”. In total I understood that they were happy to see a foreigner on the street.
Hey, that will be interesting! I should not shout at them to go away like we do to dogs. They are kids and won’t do any harm. This situation might have turned little bit embarrassing to me had it been happened in a crowded place. The road was almost empty but I could see two Japanese women back to the kids when looked back. They were calling the kids, probably to stop running behind me. One of the women ran to catch the kids. When she reached near to me, she said sorry for all the things happened.
She got two kids at her hand but one of them was interested to touch me! She again told so many excuses in Japanese and was almost like getting angry towards the kids for their play. I tried to convey her in my broken Japanese not to scold the kids. It is quite natural for kids to get excitement by seeing a foreigner. I looked different to them from other people whom they daily see. Even though Asians, Indians have different physical figure from East Asians.
I could enjoy the excitement of Japanese kids on the road. Walking away towards the station by saying sayonara to the kids, I was thinking similar scenes when along with my younger brother I walked behind the ISCON group when they camped at a temple in the village near to our home. We saw many white skin people and got excited to talk with them. We did not know what to talk. We guessed they were from America. ISCON were getting a kind of popularity at that time. My brother and I targeted a white man, who showed interest in us with a smiling face when we walked near to him.
When the ISCON group camped near the temple, we approached him but feared to talk with him. He called us near to him and asked our name and about our school. He was surprised to see us replying in English to his queries, because English is not our mother tongue, but still student in villages in India could manage to talk in his language. He gave us sweets from his bag.
We were very thrilled by talking to that American man. Is it not that same kind of feeling yesterday those Japanese kids experienced? Astonishment in seeing somebody different from them, touching a foreigner, talking with a foreigner…….for kids and why even for many of the adults these are kind of different experiences.
And that is what the life is: a collection of different experiences here and there in a chain of repetitive similar experiences.
