Wrong Station Blessing

We had a great day. We visited a church in the morning. It was an American run church and, with the southern drawl, shouts of “amen,” and traditional hymnals, you’d never know (aside from the Japanese attendees) that you were in Japan. After the service, we wandered to a new train station, bought the appropriate tickets, and then got off at the wrong station (a station that only has trains coming through every 30-40 minutes). Oops. So, we decided to kill time and find air conditioning. We found a tiny restaurant next to the station that was built onto someone’s home. We ordered our food and as time passed we realized we were going to miss the next train and then have a 40-minute wait for the following one. Well, it ended up not being a problem at all. The food was so good. I asked the owner/cook what was in the salad dressing. After telling me, he disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes. He returned with a small plastic bottle of freshly made dressing with two small ice packs all in a plastic bag! We sat and finished our food while watching TV with the owner. I then told Erik we probably should go because we had already stayed there a long time. As we got up to leave, the owner told us that we still had 25 minutes until the next train (we knew this) and that we could just wait with him. His wife told him it was going to storm later and they asked us with concern if we had umbrellas. With embarrassment, we said no, and he disappeared into the kitchen again. He returned with two plastic umbrellas. Please tell me if you’ve ever had a similar experience at a restaurant! We left so happy and not at all concerned that we spent over an hour at the wrong stop.