Chance Meetings- 15 October

Last night on the way home from the Embassy, the kids and I decided to stay in Tokyo for the weekend instead of taking our planned trip to Nikko. It’s a beautiful area and the festival I had heard about sounded great, but we were all tired and felt we could do with a bit of a sleepin and rest over the next few days. I knew we’d be able to fill the days here in Kichijoji easily, so we decided to have a sleep in this morning and then see how the day developed.

I’d arranged that I would do some ‘reading’ again for Jun in the morning, and after resting for a while, went out to restock the fridge and pantry. On the way back we stopped at a local park tohave our onigiri and salad and enjoyed watching a few local kids having a wonderful time climbing trees and having a water fight. Late in the afternoon, around 5pm, Grant and I went out to search for a different local park so Grant could do a little soccer skill practice. We felt energised, so ran up and down a few streets in the neighbourhood looking for it. We eventually found it and I left Grant there practicing while I went home to make a few phone calls to arrange some meetings with friends.

As I was on the phone, about 15 mins later, Grant came back into the house. I was surprised he was back so early, and when I looked around at the house ‘genkan’, or entrance, I saw a lady standing with him. I immediately realised that it was our good friend Matsubara-san who worked at NTT with Spike all those years ago. We’ve seen her a few times since then, once when her and her husband visited us in OZ, and then again when we came to Japan 3 years ago.
After getting of the phone I asked how she knew we were here, as I hadn’t called her yet, she said she was just about to visit her Mum who coincidently lives down the street from us here, and she saw Grant and I from behind, jogging past her Mum’s street. Of course she thought that it must be someone else as she couldn’t believe we’d be here, but couldn’t resist the urge to find out if it was us or not. So instead of stopping at her mums she went round the block and eventually drove past the park Grant was in. She said she did two passes, and could tell that Grant noticed her and was looking very wary, but decided that she just had to stop and see if it was him, not having seen him for nearly 4 years.

She approached him and asked in good English, if he was indeed who she thought he was, and asked if he remembered her. Of course he didn’t, but because she knew all our names and gave him a bit of background, he brought her back here to our house. We ended up having dinner together tonight and making plans to meet next week, and when I told Spike what had happened, at first he couldn’t believe it, but then he said, ‘well Japan is the land of co-incidences for us’, which is so true.


We enjoyed a very relaxed dinner at the same Izakaya (Japanese restaurant), that her and her husband Ryo took us to 3 years ago, reminisced about the last time we were here, and had a few more giggles about our chance meeting.