The Light and The Shop Owner's Wife

"Turn off the light! Where is that light?" Travis yelled as he pulled the bedsheets over his eyes.
He stopped halfway and realized it was the sun. The sun was out for the first time since we got here. I got off my bed and walked slowly to the window. It was strange to see the sun again. The buildings actually cast shadows on other buildings. The city took on a totally different vibe. The students were also different. When we had our morning meeting in the lobby, everyone's eyes were as bright as the sun outside.
There was no sign of a typhoon anywhere. It seemed like the typhoon threatened the country years ago and now it was just a story from the elders. Ikebukuro was hustling and bustling at 9:00 in the morning. We had time to enjoy a nice and calm breakfast, so we ate at nearby Otooya restaurant. As we were waiting for our food, my chair started swaying back and forth. I thought there was something wrong with my chair, but I was wrong. We were experiencing an earthquake. And just like the typhoon, the people of Tokyo did not blink an eye to it. What surprised me even more was my own reaction to the 6.8 magnitude earthquake. I just brushed it off like it was something insignificant. Maybe it was because we recently went through an earthquake in Hawaii, or maybe it was because I was in Japan and these kind of things happen a lot. Maybe I've fallen into the mentality that no matter what happens here, we can always rebuild. And when we do rebuild, it will be much better than before. Rebuilding grants us the permission to be as creative as our minds can be. But then again, we don't need a natural disaster to be creative. We just have to be. Creative.

The other side of town...
There were very little cars driving around. Little old ladies stood outside of their cozy stores to smile and wave us in. Most of the people there had a puzzled look on their faces. It was the first time since the day we landed I felt like a foreigner. One thing I noticed about this part of Tokyo was that people made eye contact and smiled at us gaijin. There was a tatami mat maker on the corner of what looked like a street. The owner stopped us to tell us that we were the 2nd group of foreigners to visit his shop in the last 5 years. His wife offered freshly cut oranges. It reminded me of those long summer days growing up in Kalihi.
I'd visit the corner store to spend the money my grandfather just gave me on candy. As I would reach into my pocket to pay for my gummy bears, the shop owner would grab a tangerine from her fruit basket and drop it in the bag. She made sure to tell me to eat the tangerine before the gummy bears. Those were the days of innocence and what my idea of the "aloha spirit" was. 20 years later, a kind, cute, old woman from the outskirts of Tokyo, who probably has never visited Hawaii, offers me an orange to enjoy in the hot sun. I don't think she'll ever realize it, but she gave me so much more than a juicy slice of an orange. She gave me a renewed sense of how people could be. There still are good people in the world.