Thread by @toranosukev

I don't know how unbelievable this is, but I do believe I've had multiple encounters with Yakuza.

Whatever we might imagine, in reality, they of course had no reason to give me any trouble, or to force/allow me to get involved in anything, so they just left me alone...

So, that's not a particularly exciting story 😅

I have another story which I might have told on Twitter before, about just serendipity and thank god for good luck, and the kindness of others.

During my very first trip to Japan, I visited Miyajima, the tiny shrine island near Hiroshima famous for its big red torii out in the water.

flickr.com/photos/toranos…

Due to a typhoon, they canceled all boats back to the Hiroshima "mainland." Thankfully, some other fellow English-speaking tourists also stuck on the island let me follow along with them as they (with much better Japanese skills) secured us somewhere to stay that night.

I was afraid that otherwise I might have to end up sleeping outdoors, in the rain, with the deer.

Fortunately, though, not only did I get to sleep indoors, but the typhoon also was not bad at all, where we were.

Now, getting into the heart of the story. I caught the first boat out of Miyajima the next morning, as I had a pre-booked bus ticket to go to Matsue to meet up with my sensei, my Japanese-language teacher from my uni back in the States.

I got on the bus, showed the driver my ticket, asked him if it was the right bus, and he just sort of waved me on without really looking at it. When the bus pulled away 2-3 mins early, I got a little nervous - things in Japan are typically super punctual, right on-time.

I watched nervously as highway signs showed place-names indicating we were going west. Matsue is more or less due north from Hiroshima.
But I figured, maybe we were just going a bit west before we turned north. I don't know the route. What do I know?

Finally, three hours later, we come to Masuda. Last stop. Completely totally the wrong destination. Not where I was supposed to be. I showed the driver my ticket again, complained to him in whatever tiny bit of Japanese I could muster.

IIRC he was pretty annoyed with me, but thankfully took it upon himself to help me out. Walked with me to the train station, helped me figure out that there was a train leaving in just a few minutes from Masuda to Matsue, and it cost almost exactly all the ￥ left in my wallet.

So, that's serendipitous "you might not believe it but it's actually true" point #1. Even though I was way out in totally the wrong part of Japan, there was a train from where I was to where I needed to be, leaving right then. And I had the money for it.

Arrived in Matsue three or four hours late. My cellphone was dead, and I'd foolishly left the charger in Tokyo. Completely didn't have it with me. Looking back on it now, I wonder why I didn't just try to buy, or borrow, another charger. Well, I also didn't have any money on me.

With my phone dead, I couldn't even look up my Sensei's number, let alone actually call her to tell her what happened. No one at the station knew of her leaving any sort of message for me .... and when they looked her up in the phone book for me, they couldn't find her.

Finally, I still to this day don't know how, suddenly one of the station staff had her on the phone!! Did he somehow manage to call her? I'm pretty sure she said she wasn't the one who called them... So, this is "you might think it's fake but it's true" point #2.

Of course my sensei was very annoyed, and worried about me. And she had every right to be. This sort of thing happens when you're just a wee college kid. But thank god it all worked out in the end.