April 7, our eight day in Japan.
Still all tired from the day before, we had to get up way to early to leave Nagoya and go to Kyoto. Kureha-san came to visit the hotel and say goodbye one more time. We took a taxi to Nagoya station to hop on the shinkansen again. Everything in Japan takes longer than you would expect, so we planned the trip to the station to take longer that it did; we arrived at Nagoya station at least 45 minuted early.
Waiting on our shinkansen we experienced the most heart warming experience in Japan yet. Kureha’s friend, Miyamoto, who has been with us all three days i
n Nagoya, driving us around, explaining Japan and its weird ways, works from 4 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon on the Nagoya fish-market. Our shinkansen was scheduled to leave at 12:07PM, five-teen minutes before the shinkansen arrived Miyamoto dressed in his work clothes, sweating very much has took time off to RUN to the station, RUN all over the place to find us (Nagoya station is big) to say goodbye one last time and to offer some tips for our visit to Kyoto (where he is originally from). When we finally got on the shinkansen and left, Miyamoto kept waving us goodbye at least until we where unable to see him anymore.
Do know that Japanese in general don’t express their “honne” (true feelings), that word is VERY important to them and Miyamoto-san does not speak English (translation was done over the phone with the help of Kureha-san and our handy “point-and-speak” book). To us Miyamoto looks and acts as we think Japanese do. With this in mind the experience of Miyamoto-san coming to say goodbye is very special and heart-warming!
The picture of Miyamoto-san waving was taken through the shinkansen window on the always busy Nagoya station.
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