I went on holiday to a Japan last November with my bf, and on my way from Hakone to Tokyo stopped off at Odawara to see the castle. Worth saying we are white and had a suitcase with us, so we were obviously tourists.
While we were there, we were approached three separate times — once at the castle, once at the seafront and once at the train station — by pairs of women. Each time two women approached us holding a tablet asking if we could come with them somewhere because they wanted to talk to us. We don’t speak any Japanese and none of them spoke that great English so we weren’t sure on the details of what they were asking.
Realise it was probably people selling a sightseeing trip or similar. But it was such a specific set-up and it only ever happened in Odawara! Anyone know what this was? And if it’s common?
11 comments
Sometimes religious groups do that to try recruiting people or try to find out where you live. That would be my first guess.
Happened to me – in the Tokyo station though. I was approached by a couple of old women who asked if wanted to come to Church with them.
My brother and I were hassled by jehovah witnesses at the A Bomb dome in Hiroshima
> Realise it was probably people selling a sightseeing trip or similar.
Nah, fam, that’s a cult. They wanted your money and souls, in that order.
Congrats you ran into a scam/cut.
They’re all over Japan and Odawara is no exception since it’s a tourist hot-spot at the entrance to Hakone. What you encountered was more likely to be a cult instead of a sightseeing trip.
I ended up talking to two girls before at the station. If anyone comes up to you unprompted it’s best to just ignore them all-together unless you need help then you should seek out an information desk signaled by a blue/white sign with “i” symbol on it. Almost all decent sized station will have some sort of desk or booth to help with general questions if you’re ever having issues with anything transit related.
Everyone else? Ignore, ignore, ignore. Don’t give your money to anyone or your LINE contact/any other personal info out.
Haha I’ve never had this experience but it seems like a decent amount have. Only weird thing I had with ppl approaching me in Japan (that I can remember offhand) was essentially a group of students that wanted to practice their English as they gave a mini tour of Asakusa.
It was actually really awkward because there was like 8 of them, and it was like tag team switching, so I never really said much of anything back because the person speaking at that moment kept rotating.
My wife and I had this happen to use when we where walking from Senso-ji to Tokyo Skytree. It’s best to just shake your head no and keep walking.
I had this happen to me years ago at Shinjuku station I was waiting for my wife outside the station and a Japanese man approached me and wanted to pay for my train ticket to go visit his church. The guy was so persistent and likable that I just kept debating him about religion and we talked for a good 15 minutes. My wife showed up and I said goodbye and walked away. He looked a bit upset since he probably thought he had me.
Hot tip I have told people like that that I am a Mormon missionary (am not ) and they they leave right away
No one ever approach to me when I were there, if anything people tend to stay the fuck away from me, specially in the subway lmao don’t know why tho, may be the beard.
As has been said it was probably cult recruiters. I have also several times had people survey me about what drew me to japan and what I thought of it but those folks never tried to get me to go with them anywhere.