Hi all, I’m using a throwaway because of safety reasons. I had a really scary incident with a stalker and to this day, it still makes me wonder how big of a bullet I actually dodged.
So, I currently live in Japan, but back in 2019 I was visiting Tokyo as a tourist where I made friends with a man who came up to chat with me on Takeshita street (Harajuku). He initially seemed “normal” (in lack of better words) and very friendly, I myself was fresh out in life and pretty naive back then so I thought he was just curious to make a foreign friend. After hanging out for one day (he’d shown me around Tokyo, I payed for lunch as a thank you) he insisted to buy me a pretty expensive gift. I refused it, but he wouldn’t let me say no, so I gave in and accepted it (huge mistake I know, but I was really uncomfortable and went with the people pleasing response). He then told me he was a very wealthy man and showed me his platinum cards. I felt even uncomfortable and answered that I don’t care about stuff like that.
We met up a couple more times the following days, I kept it to only friendship, but I think because of cultural differences he thought differently.
On day 3, we had no plans of seeing each other and I was planning on not meeting up with him again. He then started to send me walls of text through messages, saying he used to be a beautiful man and because he’s been beaten as a young person by criminals he’s now “not beautiful” anymore (he looked like a completely normal person), he also told me I could move in with him and he’ll show me how to live as a Japanese woman; drive, grocery shop and cook like a Japanese woman. I, of course, declined and told him he had misunderstood and that we were only friends. He was also sending me texts about these other guys from the US I’d gotten to know, that they were talking about raping me etc (a complete lie). These US guys had previously told me he had said some weird things to them too (they met briefly during a night out), that they should stay away from be because I was with him.
After I had told the Japanese guy that he had misunderstood, we were just friends, he was scaring me by writing all these things and I wished not to see him again – he showed up at the hostel I was staying at. He had booked a bed in my dormitory and I had never told him which hostel I was gonna stay at (I switched locations, he only knew of the previous one).
I ended up yelling at him in the hostel bathroom that this was not okay, that he can’t just follow a person like this. His eyes were blank and he just kept babbling on how “this was a coincidence and a surprise” (but in my mind, why would a guy with a platinum credit card book a cheap hostel in the expensive central Tokyo area of which he previously had claimed he lived in). He basically couldn’t hear a word I was yelling at him, he just kept saying it was a surprise to see me, he was visiting a friend etc.
So I took my stuff and I ran. I saw him getting stuck at a red light behind me as I was leaving the hostel, he actually followed me out. I managed to get out of his sight and checked in to a hotel. About an hour later he texted me saying “Why are you here? Surprised!!
Did you have dinner?
Or what do you want to do?
Check the refrigerator.
You will see which one is you still have secret codes😁
Have a nice evening👍”.
I didn’t reply to his text. The next morning I left Tokyo and I didn’t see or hear from him again until a few years later, when a random Facebook user messaged me – I knew it was him by the way he wrote. Now he’s deleted all the accounts that he’s ever used to communicate with me, all I have left are some photos of him from that trip and a huge life lesson. I am not as naive anymore and obviously now see and understand the hundreds of mistakes I made during this.
Sorry for the long post, this incident keeps creeping up on me and I’ve often wondered how big of a bullet I actually dodged… Would I have been kidnapped or just accidentally become a girlfriend of a controlling Japanese man if I would’ve been even more naive and liked him back and would’ve moved in with him during my travels/wouldn’t have been able to get out of his sight when I ran away? Any insights or thoughts from follow residents? Thank you for reading my post..!
by Fluffy-Dependent6152