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The Kindness of Strangers

A Travel Life Lesson

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I’m far from the first to string those four words together. Legendary journalist Kate Adie looped them in a line to describe her autobiography; Vivien Leigh sighed them in A Streetcar Named Desire. Writing courses rail against them and editors hang their heads and demand something fresh.

I’ve even read articles that go one step further, tearing the words apart and flinging them across the pixels of an angry page, particularly when it comes to travel writing. The Kindness of Strangers? Puh-lease, they cry. Don’t you morons realise that most people couldn’t care less about helping you? Haven’t you noticed that your friends and family assist you far more often? How can you bear to be so naive?

Well, I’m going to round up those four words and I’m not going to string them together. I’m going to find glittering silver thread to weave them into a sparkling, dancing parade.

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The Kindness of Strangers in Tokyo

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Like Kate Adie, I have now travelled a lot (unlike her, I’ve skipped most of the war zones, I don’t have an OBE and no-one knows who I am. Which at least means there are more strangers around.)

I’m inclined to believe that something stirs within our souls when strangers show us kindness precisely because most people couldn’t care less. Even when they’re supposed to.

Earlier today I stood at the gates to the Koishikawa Korakuen Gardens. Surrounded by shiny Tokyo skyscrapers, these low wooden doors looked out of place. As, I’m sure, did I.

Crowds in suits hurried past, anxious not to slip on the fresh wet snow. Incense billowed across the walls, tumbling over the curved Japanese rooftops and mingling with my own visible breath before disappearing into nothing.

The gates were locked.

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Have you ever felt lonely and lost?

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With my mind tainted by the tiredness of a different time zone, I blinked for a little longer than normal before walking away. Darkness was chasing me and I had to find the entrance within minutes before the opportunity was lost.

Behind me, I heard shouting and I turned to see a Japanese woman in her sixties gesturing with an intensity that few market traders could match. This elaborate choreography directed me to the alternative entrance, the one off the maps, hidden from view, around the hexagonal block and then further along again.

My soul almost soared.

Now depending on what mood you’re in, you may well be thinking: get a grip. Some woman gives you directions and you go all misty-eyed?

But this woman stands for more than that. Yes, she’s the antidote to the US Airways staff who dropped a bag on my head and complained that I was in the way; to the car hire company who refused to speak to me and the **** who stole the lens from my luggage. And she’s obviously a world away from the people who cause real damage in this world: the murderers, the rapists and the supporters of the BNP.

Yet she stands for even more than that. This is a woman who offered help, without being asked, to someone who was lost. Someone she had never met before and would never meet again. As far as I can see, there was absolutely nothing in it for her (I wasn’t lost on the subway and blocking access to the platform, her brother didn’t have a carpet shop with great bargains at just the other end of town and, given the demographics on both sides, it’s pretty safe to say she wasn’t after sexual favours.)

She was just showing kindness to a stranger.

That’s what gives us aid organisations and public health, that’s what gives us human rights and peace. That’s what gives us freedom.

So, go ahead and laugh, all ye cynics of the phrase. Personally, I’d like to see it more often.

The kindness of strangers. There, said it.

How about you? Do you believe in the kindness of strangers?

I first wrote this piece on The Kindness of Strangers seven years ago while in Japan. The seven years that have followed have only strengthened my belief in the words.

I’ve also written this piece on Acts of Kindness from around the world.