Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Home Owners

We live in a house off of the base here in Japan.  It's actually less than a 5 minute drive to the front gate depending on the traffic lights.  We only looked at 3 houses in town before snatching this one up.  Originally, the house was listed as not allowing any pets, but we talked to the realtor about how gentle our dog is, and she convinced the owner to allow us to live here.  Now, this is a different situation than most who rent in that it's the owner's actual house.  He lived here and loves this house.  It's kind of a lot a pressure. 

He's come over on occasion to check things out.  He refuses to come inside.  Usually he comes when there is some kind of work being done on the house or lawn.  He had hired someone to trim the bushes and someone to fix our driveway gate,, etc.  Every time he came, he would bring us a gift.  Japan is very much a gift-giving country.  People give gifts for everything!  Well, he would stop by the local patisserie and bring us some custard-type desserts that are very popular among the Japanese.  Very yummy!  And he has also grown very fond of Laika.

Today, I pulled up to the house after my Bible study on base, and he was there.  He, of course handed me a box of more custards as soon as I got out of the car and motioned at the work he was doing (He speaks zero English, by the way.).  The previous time he had visited he saw a chair in the yard that was blocking a hole in the bushes.  Luke and I had put it there, so that we could let Laika out of the house, and not have to worry about her getting out of the yard.  I showed him the hole and tried to explain this to him in the very few Japanese words I knew, and he tried to talk back to me in Japanese.  I had no idea what he said, but got the sense that he understood what I was saying.

Well, today he put up a mesh plastic chicken-wire sort of thing against the bushes to block that hole.  I thought it was super nice of him to do that because originally he didn't want pets in his house.  He must really be impressed with Laika....or maybe he's bribing us to take care of his house.  Anyway...he seems very nice, and I wish that I could communicate with him.  The only thing I could do was bring him some banana bread.  Hopefully that was enough of a thank you.




 

1 comment:

  1. it makes me feel good to know there is someone like that in your life. what an unexpected and unusual blessing :)

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