As a kid, I remember being absolutely floored by my mother's uncanny ability to locate her best friend anywhere in the world. One time we were in London, and my mom knew her friend was there, but not where she was staying. So she opened the telephone book and got the right hotel on the second call. Another time, in Athens (Greece), with no idea her friend was there, we turned a corner in the market and ran right into her friend's boyfriend and daughter.
I'll never forget randomly walking into Harrods on another London trip with my parents on the exact day and time when my favorite member of Monty Python happened to be there signing a book of limericks he had written, and giddily managing to get his autograph.
Or the lights going out during my visit to King Tut's tomb, leaving me in the dark with a handful of strangers, contemplating the tomb's fabled curse.
Of late its mostly been my poltergeist providing the other in otherworldly, but a couple of weekends ago I had what is hands down the oddest encounter I've ever had with another person.
A bit of backstory: before the Granrodeo concert on August 24th, a friend and I met up with a Taiwanese acquaintance (I'll call her L-san) and one of her friends for karaoke at the Granrodeo-themed room in Shibuya. We spent a couple of hours together singing and went our separate ways. I knew that L-san had multiple friends coming from Taiwan for the shows, but I didn't meet any of them -- just this one friend who lives in Japan.
Cut to Sunday night at Haneda airport. I was completely zonked after three concerts (two Granrodeo, one FLOW) and a day of rollercoaster riding. I fell asleep in the airport (as you do ... well, as I do) around 9 PM and slept pretty soundly until around 3 AM. However, at some point between those times, I woke up and was sort of sitting up when I noticed a cheerful Rodeo Girl waving at me. I waved back and she came up to me. At that point, I assumed she was, like me, catching an early flight back to Fukuoka or Sapporo, so asked her, "Fukuoka?" Her reply, "Taiwan!" caught me by surprise. She explained that she was a friend of the Taiwanese Rodeo Girls I'd gone to karaoke with. I blinked and replied "L-san's friend?!" She confirmed my assumption, much to my bafflement. I offered her a seat, but she declined, probably because her flight was boarding before too long.
Now, mind you. the ONLY way she could have known me as "the foreigner we went to karaoke with" was if they described me to her. Clearly they described me well enough to this fan that she could recognize me on sight at the airport, when the only Granrodeo merchandise I had around me was a bag you had to look closely at to see the branding (and I was using it for a pillow). Admittedly, short, pale, blue-eyed, blue-haired foreigners aren't a dime a dozen here, but still.... Being mostly asleep, and conducting the entire conversation in Japanese only added to the dreamlike quality of the encounter.
Nice to meet you, semi-random Taiwanese Rodeo Girl. I wonder if we will meet again, but this time at a show.... (and when I'm awake and sure you're real and not a walk-on from one of my dreams)
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