Japanese People Are Lovely

I have just been speaking to a friend on Skype and it's official...I have been away from England for too long, and I am now scared of going back. Everybody in Japan is so nice all the time, I can't bear to think of going back to being suspicious and angry and having to listen to loud people talking and playing music on the train.

The last few weeks have provided many many examples of Japanese kindness, and, as I can't be arsed to structure this post in any way whatsoever, I am just going to bullet point them:

* Possibly the shyest lady in the world, the librarian from my junior high school, took me to and home from the enkai last week (YES I am totally in the loop!) and has asked me to go for drinks at her house with her and her husband.
* My new landlords (husband and wife) have just come round to help me fix my TV, but couldn't (as my TV is too old to connect to this new flat's digital whatever) so they have just GIVEN me a TV that they 'weren't using' (which has 2011 written on it, so it is not only new, it is from the FUTURE) in an unfurnished flat for free and brought me chocolates and biscuits too! HOW NICE IS THAT??
* When I moved three people from the town hall wouldn't let me pay for a van or anything, they all used the town hall's van things and spent essentially a whole day helping me take things from one apartment to the next...one of them paid for lunch too and just wouldn't let me pay even to say thankyou (I gave them some sweets instead in a pretty little bag which is definitely the Japanese way to thank people).
* The home economics teacher from my school who is lovely and who I speak to sometimes (I go to the cooking club sometimes) went to Kyoto and bought me a fan there! I don't know her that well so there was absolutely no need, and I totally bum fans, so that made me so happy.
* I have started up a new scheme at school where every week I choose a conversational English keyword, the sort that isn't in their rubbish textbooks (so far: week 1-long time no see, week 2-easy peasy) and if the students come and say five of them to me over a term, they can have a prize, and it has gone down so well! Everyone has been so supportive (the teachers I mean) and loads of kids are taking part even though they don't really know what the prizes are...that would NEVER happen in England. They are even allowing me to announce the keyword once a week on the school speaker thing ( you know like the ones you wee on American TV shows like Saved By The Bell) even though it's blatently not important enough for that. Eveyrone has been so nice happy to support me with it, I'm over the moon! (Oooo, that could be week 3's keyword).
* When we turned up at the football, 3 of us had tickets and one of us didn't, and the ticket and no ticket entrance was different. Instead of just sending my mate off with a point and a grunt as I imagine they would in England, this little old man in a fluorescent yellow jacket walked my friend all the way round the stadium to the other entrace, helped her buy the ticket and walked her all the way back to find us. Later on, we were trying to quickly pour some beer out of the cans we'd bought in the shop outside into our paper cups and this man came over...in England it would be to confiscate them, shout at you, possibly kick you out, in Japan...it was to offer us the can recycling bag, and just kept telling us to take our time pouring, he would wait next to us until we'd finished.

This list could go on forever.

I heart Japan.