Today I decided to check out a new grocery store. It's one that I have passed by many times while taking a taxi to school. It's pretty much a straight shot from my apartment to this store, but I had never gone there before because it felt like it was farther away than the one I usually go to. Today, however, I didn't have much to do, so I decided to find out how long it would take to get there.
Waiting to cross the street, I noticed someone staring at me. I looked over and discovered that it was a young-ish guy. He might've been my age, or he might've been in his thirties. I couldn't really tell. When I made eye contact with him he said, "Kawaii, ne" (basically, "You're cute"). I just kind of laughed. The light changed and I started to ride off, and he jogged along side me, which weirded me out a little. He kept saying, "Stop! Stop!", and like a moron, I did. What followed was one of the stranger conversations I've had recently.
First he asked if I liked something. I couldn't understand what he said because he was speaking somewhat quietly and there was traffic noise all around. He asked again, this time in English, and I still couldn't hear him so I said, "I don't know." I think it might've been some kind of Japanese game that he was talking about. After that, he started talking about "oppai". I almost didn't believe that was what he said until he said, in English, "large bust". At that point I said, "I have to go" and started pedaling like hell. He said, "Stop! Stop!" again, but by this point I knew we weren't going to have any kind of normal conversation. I guess I should've known all along.
He ran after me for a little while, but since I was biking pretty fast, I lost him before I had to stop for another traffic light. I was pretty creeped out. I'm fairly grateful that I was on my bike and he was on foot, or else I would've had to figure out some other way to deal with him. In any case, he was out of sight, so I continued on to the grocery store.
When I arrived, I parked my bike and grabbed a shopping cart. Shopping carts here are much smaller than in the U.S.; they're really just little frames that you put a shopping basket on top of. The kind of shopping basket you can carry in your arms. One nice thing, though, is that these shopping carts are much more maneuverable than the ones in the U.S. I wandered around the store, which was pretty large, and found a good number of things to buy. I was pretty happy with the product selection. I was quite excited to find a bag of Ore-Ida frozen french fries. Excited enough that I bought them despite the fact that I don't actually want to cook them.
After filling up my cart, I bought the food and loaded it into my backpack. This time I remembered to make a note of when I left the store so that I could time myself. I also noticed a sign indicating that it was about 2 kilometers from the grocery store area to my neighborhood. Riding at a moderate pace, it took me about 20 minutes to get home. So, it would seem that this grocery store is just as easy to get to as the one I usually use. I may use this one more often in the future, since it had a pretty good selection of foods.
On the way back, I was a little concerned that I might run into the weird guy again. I made all kinds of contingency plans for changing direction and looping back around to my apartment so he wouldn't figure out where I live. Fortunately, I didn't see him again, and the ride home was uneventful. I think what really confused me about that encounter was that he wasn't drunk, it wasn't the middle of the night, and he wasn't actually trying to harass me; he really seemed to think we were having a perfectly normal conversation. I think it's rather unfortunate that the only Japanese men who would actually approach me (a foreign woman) are the strange ones. It would be nice to know a few more normal Japanese people. I guess meeting non-crazy people takes time, though, since you don't typically make friends by approaching strangers at random.
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