Back in the 90’s, after I had moved to Japan (from the US) I took a train to a job interview several hours away from Osaka. After my interview, I went back to the train station and was surprised to find out that I couldn’t pay for my ticket home by credit card. The ticket was several hundred dollars and they would ONLY accept cash. Unfortunately I had NO money left, having used all of my cash to buy my ticket there. In fact, I didn’t even have enough money to make a phone call back to my home-stay family to tell them about my predicament. I then became very distraught after I found out that the ATM’s didn’t work that day either (since it was a holiday). I had no idea how I was going to get home….   I tried, with no luck, to beg the train station to accept my credit card. I truly had no idea what I was going to do or how I was getting home. Having overheard my situation, an American woman came over to me. We struck up a conversation and I learned she was from California and was living and working in the city. She said, “I normally would not do this but I would like to pay for your ticket. You must have angel watching out for you!” I stood there in awe as she kindly handed me several hundred dollars to get home—with no expectation of repayment! Fortunately though, I remembered that I had my US checkbook with me and was able to write a check to her for the amount since she was also American.

But the interesting thing was that what she didn’t know was I was wearing an angel pin my grandmother, who’d recently passed away, had given me… So when she said I must have an angel watching over me, she was so right. However, without a doubt, she was also my angel that day!