10 fun stories from Japan – A Miniseries: The Parallel Dimension Story
by The Flamingo
Dear reader, you already know what big fans we are about all things Japan. The Flamingo wrote a 10 stories miniseries about funny/awkward/eccentric experiences that can only occur in Japan. I will share with you some more or less embarrassing moments that happened during the trips there, that always make top conversation topics.
10. The parallel dimension story
On our last trip to Tokyo, we had a Romanian friend accompany us. On our last day out we split our ways, agreeing to meet at a pub in Shibuya, where we went together a couple of times before. Said and done.
In the evening, reaching the very crowded Shibuya metro station, we spied our friend just in front of us. It was him, same hair, same backpack, same t-shirt. He looked once sideways and then we knew it was him for sure. But the crowd swallowed him. We thought we would meet at the pub directly anyway, as agreed, it was only ten minutes away.
The pub was small, only one room, but crowded as well. We found a table right by the queue at the bar, where everybody had to order and pay. So we knew, if our friend arrived, he would go buy something and we couldn’t miss him. And we waited, and waited (there were no smartphones back then and we didn’t have reception in Japan)…and waited.
We were sick with worry after an hour and a half. If we hadn’t seen him at the station, then there would have been no reason for paranoia. We waited for two whole hours in the pub, walking through it, going to the toilet, always watching the door to see who came and went. No sign of him.
We went back to the hotel thinking he would be there, but no. By then, our paranoia was getting out of hand. We imagined him dead in a ditch, with organs harvested, or in the wrong, crowd of people getting drugged and robbed. We pleaded with the hotel stuff to call the police but they weren’t worried.
He appeared after a couple of hours, angry, asking us where we had been, because he went to the same pub and waited from 8 pm till 11 pm. We were totally freaked out by each other’s stories, we even showed him the pictures we took there that evening.
The pub was small, we couldn’t have missed each other. And no…there weren’t two pubs with the same name, on the same street, serving the same food and signature cocktails and with the bartender wearing a green shirt in Shibuya…we checked.
So this remains a mystery to be solved by the likes of Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes.
Photo from Flamingo‘s archive
