Hello, I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this (my first time posting on Reddit) so please redirect me if I'm wrong, but I would like to get some information or opinions about something that happened to me in Shinjuku yesterday.
About me (because maybe it's relevant or maybe not, I don't know): I am a white guy, 30s, and on the smaller side, about 175cm and 67kg. I was walking around Shinjuku at about 8:30pm on Friday night, in my opinion, behaving normally for a tourist I guess. Looking around, taking a few photos, taking in the atmosphere. I try to not behave disrespectfully in general, I'm not loud, I try to stay out of the way, try to respect privacy like if I take a photo at street level I try to hold my camera up and avoid getting people in the photo. Etc. So I would like to believe that I was not behaving in a jerk-ish way. No differently to most tourists walking around. (But I accept that I may be totally ignorant because this is not my country!)
Anyway I was on the street that Google maps says is called Kuyakusho-dori. One one end it has Mister Donut opposite entrance 15 to the underground, and down the street at the other end is basically a big glass club (I guess?) on the corner. I was walking past this place, and I stopped at the edge of the pavement just to look at this building for a few seconds. About 3 seconds later, a guy bumps into me pretty hard. Shoulder tackle basically. At the last second I noticed and tried to avoid him but he slammed his right shoulder into my right shoulder. These kinds of accidents happen sometimes, so I immediately turned to him and said "sorry!" Which I would think is a pretty ordinary and polite reaction for normal people, and which usually you might expect from the other person when you accidentally bump. So I turn to him to apologise, then I see this guy. A Japanese guy, 20s or 30s. He is dressed in a black suit jacket and white shirt but with no tie, I would say that he dresses like one of these "host" guys basically that you see on many signs in this kind of area, but he wasn't a "handsome" dude like an actual host, he looked more like a guy playing dress-up as a host to be honest. A pretty rough looking guy with long hair dyed light brown, and a bit of facial hair on his chin.
He seemed caught between gestures, like, he's half wincing and rubbing his shoulder as if it's really painful to him, and half brushing his shoulder off like he's disrespected to have come into physical contact with me. He was around my height, he seemed probably more muscular, basically I would say that he couldn't realistically be hurt. I wasn't even hurt despite taking the brunt of it, because in this collision I didn't shoulder check him whatsoever, I tried to turn away and move back from it basically.
Anyway, I apologised on instinct, then saw his reaction, felt like it was a bit dodgy, then felt like there was nothing more to be done, so I turned away to keep walking. But he then followed after me and was saying "choto matte" which I understood, and so I stop, turn to him again and say sorry again and "gomenasai". He's giving me an absolute death stare, and begins literally shouting at me, full-volume… it was honestly more like something from a TV show or movie… I'm just trying to walk away from him now because obviously politeness isn't working, and he continues following me, loudly berating me in Japanese, and I have absolutely no idea what he was saying because my Japanese is like 'successfully get chopsticks and a plastic bag at the konbini'-level, at best.
He followed me about 3/4 of the way down the street (towards the Mister Donut end), continuing to shout at me, and I didn't know what to do so I just ignored him and walked at a consistent pace without looking back again. A lot of people were turning and looking at what was going on. I luckily tucked into a bit of a crowd eventually, and he either lost sight of me or just gave up and stopped following me. The whole thing felt a bit ridiculous and maybe a little embarrassing but embarrassment really doesn't bother me as much as the fact that it was quite frightening and intimidating, because for a minute I thought I was going to get punched or something… I have been to Japan 4 times, lived in other Asian countries for the majority of my adult life, but I have never encountered a situation like this before in Japan or anywhere else in the world to be honest.
My wife saw the whole thing. She wasn't next to me at the time but happened to be about 5-10 paces behind me I guess. She said that the guy seemed to direct himself into me on purpose. As I said, I wasn't being a giant roadblock, I was trying to stay of the way on the left side of the pavement, and I did try and step even more to the left to get out of his way. So basically, she said, it seemed like he wanted to collide with me and then berate me…
So, I'm just very confused about what happened, and why, and I wondered if anyone could give me information… Was he just an a-hole? Is this a common thing? Is it the beginning of a known scam or shakedown? Or, if you think I have done something wrong here, then you can please let me know too because honestly I don't want to inconvenience anyone and I always try to be polite but we can never be 100% sure we are doing the right thing in a foreign place. Although seriously I don't think I was doing anything knowingly impolite or obnoxious. To me (maybe I'm totally wrong but) it seemed like some kind of planned interaction to be honest. Like, he bumps into people and then acts hurt and insulted, and follows you shouting to embarrass you or maybe try to get you in trouble. I don't know. I'm not 100% on this, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I read that public embarrassment is one of the absolute worst things for Japanese people so maybe he wants to intentionally incite situations to attempt to cause public embarrassment? And then I guess try to extort money from people to make him shut up or something? Or maybe he's saying I've injured him? I don't speak enough Japanese to know! Maybe the most likely thing is he was just looking for a fight? As I said, I'm not a big guy, so maybe he targeted me because he thought of me as a good target for that kind of stuff? I googled about the situation and found something called 'butsukaria' but it says that is usually incited by salarymen and towards women. Well, this guy was 100% not a salaryman and I'm a guy.
I heard Shinjuku could be a bit of a dodgy place, so is this commonplace? Basically if anyone wants to give their insights about this I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks!
TLDR: A guy shoulder barged me and then followed me shouting at me. Anybody know why?
by InfuriatingShoulder7
