Japanese Christmas Miracle, aka Tierney is Stupid And People Are Nice

I remember back in the early 90s outside San Francisco, when I was maybe 5 or so and my little brother was a baby, jumping into my parents' bed on Christmas morning and being so befuddled that my dad was tired and groggy and not literally jumping up and down like a flea on cocaine because OMFG ITS CHRISTMAS THERE ARE PRESENTS SANTA CAME OMG OMG OMG!!! Over the years, it has still felt magical but it has been so much different than the magic of experiencing it as a kid. Honestly, I get more excited about the gifts I give others than the gifts I receive myself. It's an opportunity to hang out with family and drink wine and eat delicious food, and if there were no gifts at all I'd be just as happy.

Just when we were teetering on the brink of kinda-sorta feeling like Japan was “home”, it was Christmas. Our family is thousands of miles away. We live in a country that celebrates Christmas with buckets of KFC that you have to order weeks in advance and they dress up Colonel Sanders as Santa and that is a real thing that I am not making up. To top it off, my dad didn't send out his annual mix CD of interesting and non-traditional Christmas music which completely ruined my life (THANKS DAD). We have a kitten so buying a tree would ensure little more than shards of glass from broken ornaments embedded in my feet. Can you hear the distant yet mesmerizing lull of a tiny, tiny violin? Please, let me play you the sounds of my expatriate people.


So what is a childless couple living in Japan to do to prepare for Christmas? Oh boy you just kick up your heels because I'm about to tell you. You drink a half a bottle of wine, log in to Amazon (which really should have a breathalyzer app), and you order your cat two insane cat trees because one would clearly be neglectful and then a pound of catnip to make up for the fact that you didn't order three. Then you also buy 81 rolls of toilet paper and a full pallet of paper towels and 3 gallons of Simple Green along with a few dozen other things that were so random, the customs stickers on our packages just said “more weird shit” under Description. Amazon was our Santa this year. On a particularly ridiculous delivery day, two soldiers who happened to be at the mail room at the same time as me had to help me get all the boxes into my car because they wouldn't even fit on the rolling cart.


After hemorrhaging money on gifts to send back home and 3 years worth of soap, we decided that we had been altogether too practical in our rampant spend-a-thon. We needed a Treat Yo Self day. That day would be Christmas Eve, which happened to fall on a Saturday. So clearly we chose to go to one the most notorious shopping areas in the world because when Japan says “jump”, we say “in how many different directions at once and what drugs should we be smoking?”


Our main goal was to go to Kiddyland, which is on Takeshita Dori – an infamous shopping street in Harajuku. They sell everything you would have bought yourself if you were 11 years old and stole your mom's credit card after snorting Pixie Stix. We were looking forward to buying some intricate wooden buildings that you put together like a puzzle, and metal puzzles of trains and Star Wars things. We bought an insane amount of them and even some Shinkansin chopsticks, a flying ball and a drifting RC car because Adults we are. We got on the train heading back home so we could play with toys and torment our cat.


Because I am criminally stupid, I departed the Fujisawa-bound train to get on the Odakyu line towards home and left AN ENTIRE BAG FULL OF EXPENSIVE-ASS TOYS AND PUZZLES on the train. I realized this when we got out of the train station at our home stop and immediately threw myself into traffic to die with honor as my life had clearly careened into complete disrepair.


Considering the Tokyo-area train system moves 10s of millions of people per day on approximately umpteen trains going in frickity different directions, logic would dictate I should write the loss off, go home, and drink away my sorrows. However, I took a Japanese Head-Start class on base when I first arrived here, and the instructor told us - “if you lose something on the train, you will get it back. People don't steal on the trains here. You just have to track it down.” I remembered that, so we went to the information desk at the train station. The station attendant did not speak English, and I just kept repeating “wakarimasen, gommenasai” (I don't understand, I'm sorry) until he got a translator on the phone. After passing it back and forth, it was determined that they would try and find my bag, and if I came back the following day, they would let us know where it was.


I woke up Christmas morning, and instead of scampering downstairs to open presents, I strapped on my boots and walked with Jan to the train station to see if my Christmas presents to myself had been recovered. In Portland, a bag left behind on a MAX train would be long gone before you even knew it was missing. Considering Tokyo has 22x more people than Portland, I was dubious.


We got to the window, and strangely enough the same gentleman was working and recognized me right away. “Bag is at Fujisawa Station. You can pick it up?”


OH. MY. GOD.


I've had many wonderful Christmas mornings full of happiness and glee opening up presents. This was truly unique. I left a bag full of $200 worth of toys unattended on a train with zillions of people boarding on and off on CHRISTMAS EVE, and someone kindly took it to the station and reported it a lost item. On Christmas morning, I literally jumped up and down like a flea on cocaine in the middle of the Sagamihara train station. Running through my head was “OMG OMG OMG I'M GETTING PUZZLES I HAVE TOYS I'M SO EXCITED OMG IT'S CHRISTMAS!”


All it took for me to enjoy the blistering hysteria that I once experienced as a little girl on Christmas morning was to completely fail at life and get bailed out by people who had nothing to gain by helping me. It wasn't even so much about the stuff in the bag – I had mentally already accepted that it was gone, along with the money I spent on it – but about the fact that I live in a country with people who will bend over backwards for a foreigner who doesn't speak the language and is dumb enough to leave a bag on a train, and through a series of phone calls and searches and and English translator, delivered to me my Christmas gifts to myself on Christmas morning.


Christmas away from home and family was challenging. But I can say with sincerity that the kindness of others filled me with just as much glee as a tree surrounded by gifts when I was 5 years old, jumping up and down on my parents' bed.


So this holiday season, pay it forward. The best gifts aren't tangible.


And a special thank you to the staff at the Sagamihara-Odakyu train station. You guys will never read this, but you were my Santa Claus on what might have been a kind of sad Christmas. I award you all the karma.