Kinda sorta copy/pasted question from Reddit. But wanted to see what your answers are like on here!
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That fuzzy uneasy feeling was the static before a strike 😅
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To me it felt like walking through invisible spiderwebs, strike was 50 feet away seconds later.
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In the early 2000s, I had just joined the US military right out of high school and found myself stationed in Japan for my first assignment.
I loved Japanese culture and had started a college course on basic Japanese language so I could communicate with the locals and find my way around without getting lost in a foreign country.
One day, one of the civilians in my office was retiring and he chose a fancy hotel in the next city over to host his retirement ceremony. They had a bunch of meeting/party rooms we could host our ceremony in. It was fun, but I’m a bit introverted, so at some point, I stepped out into the grand lobby of the hotel to recover some energy by myself. There was a grand piano in one corner with some petite Japanese lady playing soft music on it. I learned against a large pillar and quietly listened for a bit.
All of a sudden, a meeting room door nearby banged open and some Japanese businessman stormed out on his phone. He was agitated and speaking angrily into his flip phone (smartphones didn’t exist yet). He stopped on the other side of the pillar from me and continued his loud discussion.
I had gotten absorbed into some Japanese drama TV shows and had learned to identify the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia) slang. This guy was using the same dialect. I got a chill down my spine; it was my first time running into a Yakuza member in real life.
The guy finished his call and turned to leave… and stopped when he saw me standing practically next to him. His anger flared up and he started speaking aggressively at me in Japanese. Probably pissed that I was listening in on his call.
I caught a few words here and there, but my Japanese wasn’t good enough for full sentences yet, especially spoken rapidly at me in an angry tone.
When he paused, I said in English, “Um… I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” I knew how to say it in Japanese, but I didn’t want to give him any inkling that I knew Japanese.
His entire demeanor changed. He grinned from ear to ear and said, “Ah! America-jin, ne? Good! Good guy!” He gave me a rough pat on the shoulder and then turned and went back to his meeting room.
I thought he was gonna drag me into the meeting room with his buddies and I’d never be found again, so I was relieved when he smiled and left me be. I went right back to my party and made sure not to go anywhere by myself for the rest of the evening.
So uh are you Japanese by heritage?
No, but I have dark hair and have been described as having a Mediterranean look, so a lot of people around the world assumed I was from Europe at first glance. The Yakuza guy didn’t immediately pin me for an American until I spoke English.
This was also way up in northern Japan, where very few foreigners can be found, so their exposure to us is limited. Lots of Japanese people stared at us in public if we went anywhere except the town our base was in.
Not OP but I take it that you’re asking because you’re trying to figure out why they weren’t visually assumed to be a foreigner and why they were assumed to be able to speak Japanese?
Yes.
“Don’t shoot! I’m American! I’m stupid and didn’t understand a word of what was said!”
Haha! Yup, basically.
Fortunately, a lot of Japanese folks were obsessed with Americans and American culture when I was living over there, so if you could convince them you were American, they would bend over backwards to help you with anything.
I flew back into Japan after a vacation and I had a 25-hr layover in Tokyo before flying back to my military base. I slept in a hotel that night, then went to the airport the next morning and asked if they could bump me to an earlier flight so I wouldn’t be stuck in the airport all day.
The lady at the counter said they had a flight leaving in 15 minutes and she would ensure I got on it.
Then she took off her heels, grabbed me by the hand, and literally ran me through the airport! She pushed me to the front of the security line, then we sprinted all the way to the terminal. They even held the plane an extra 10 minutes to ensure I got on it. I felt bad for holding up a plane, but damn! What service!
Wow. What a legend that lady was.
Oh my god. My friends and I were doing a road trip around the US when we got lost somewhere crossing the border into southern California. We took some weird back road into the woods looking for a campsite that was on Google (we were roughing it as much as possible to be cheap), but it became super apparent that we took the wrong turn somewhere and we went deeper and deeper into the woods. It started to get dark and at this point my ex and I were like, “Let’s just go to a hotel, it’s already too dark to camp.” My friend, the driver, was convinced we were almost there and the campsites were just around the next corner and wanted to save the money.
At some point, we saw this tree across the road and the only way to keep going forward was into what looked like just a clearing where some rusted out cars were. Immediately my ex and I felt this overwhelming, hair-raising “it’s time to go” vibe and we started telling him to turn around. My friend pulled into the clearing saying something like, “No, this might be it, there’s cars parked here”. We pull into the lot and kinda do a loop, just to put the headlights on the surroundings and see what’s all there. Like I said, it’s an island of gravel, short, dry grass, and some rusted out cars in the middle of dense, mountainous forest.
My friend is juuuuuuust about to park and gloat about ‘finding the campsite’ when some feral looking dude comes barreling out of the woods like a cryptid, sprinting at the back of the car. My ex and I start screaming like loons as this dude closes the gap and my friend punches it and starts driving back down the road we came in on. The dude just stood in the road behind us with something metal (I think a pipe) and watched us go in a cloud of dust and taillights.
Absolutely HORRIFYING experience and we still have no idea what the fuck the situation was there.
Most likely scenario was a homeless person, scared out of their mind that someone was robbing what little they had found and making their one safe place unsafe.
Smart move getting out quick, but probably a sad story behind the fear.
That was just Jesse. You probably didn’t notice the Winnebago.
what the fuck the situation was there
opioids and/or amphetamines, at a first guess
Nah, he just thought OP had a real pretty mouth
Once I was in a holiday crowd when the people per square meter got too high, and the beginning stages of crowd crush started happening. Waves of kinetic energy were being transmitted through the crowd without anyone even trying, it just wasn’t possible to stop yourself from getting shoved forward. I told my now-husband we need to get out NOW, and we did. Nothing happened to my knowledge, no fatal crush or anything like that. But it was scary as hell during what was supposed to be a good time.
I stopped attending standing-room-only concerts as a result of experiencing similar. Absolutely terrifying, powerless feeling.
I experienced this feeling during new years in shibuya. It’s scary af, you can no longer move, you’re part of a human liquid. Never again
Almost by definition the stories in here should be pretty boring. Glad you had the awareness to keep yours boring.
2010 Loveparade. First we got told that there would be a different entry, which there wasn’t, which meant we needed to walk quite a while. On the way we had a few situations, where people pushed a lot and it’s not a nice feeling, when you have a considerable mass and you get pushed easily. We made it to the last big check and we where greeted with a clear view to the tunnel. At this point there weren’t big queues visible and it was just a short walk. I said to the 2 friends I was with, that NOW I want to go home. It was not a gut feeling or something, I just knew I don’t want to continue and I want to go home. One friend decided to stay, as we where this close and another agreed with me and left with me.
The friend who stayed, did cut his visit shorter, lucky for him. For people who don’t know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Parade_disaster It was one of the biggest crowd crushes disasters. 21 dead, 652 injured. It happend in that tunnel, which I looked into and decided to go home. That criminal trial is considered one of the most complex ones of the post war period. In 2020 they dropped the trial. The issue was for these crimes, they only had 10 years and they said due to the limitations of covid, they said they will run out of time.
Okay, now I’ve read about crowd crushes and am living in fear of groups of 3 or more people
The fascinating part for me is that sufficiently dense crowds of people (> ~5/m^2) exhibit behaviors similar to fluids
At the very start of COVID. When many of my online and IRL friend groups started internalizing what I now recognize as Russian/Chinese influence ops (which were being spread by unwitting Western Useful Idiots – Conservatives and Libertarians)
They started not just opposing lockdowns, but actively spreading virus: no mask, it’s just a flu, CDC is lying, Fauchi is an idiot, etc.
It felt like being in a burning building. I grabbed my family, ran for the exit by cutting ties with the Influenced, and left them to burn. Now many of them are utterly consumed by propaganda and no longer recognize reality. 😢
I lost one in much the same way. It still hurts.
And as long as this and these aren’t properly addressed it will just go on. Russia loves it!
properly addressed
I legit wish there was real civic discussion about influence ops/propaganda.
I wish political parties were fighting about the best ways to identify and combat it.
I wish private organizations, news outlets, media companies, NGOs etc were talking about it and even pretending to acknowledge it.
“We are in a race between education and oblivion.” -R B Fuller
Driving out west in Canada from the prairies to see the ocean years ago. Went through Golden, BC and decided to go into the town proper for a dinner, rather than the roadside chains. It was about 6:10 PM. When we walked in there were about twenty locals who immediately all went quiet when we walked in. We grabbed a table and proceeded to get stared at by the whole room. I nodded at a few with no response. My wife looked terribly uncomfortable. We got up, apologized to the waitress and got the hell out of dodge. Even looking back years later I am still weirded out by that scene. I’m sure that, if we stayed, we would’ve wound up in some sort of Stephen King short story.
Is that like the Canadian version of a Sundown town?
I was young and had just moved to a decent sized midwest city by myself. I didn’t know anyone so spent a lot of my time exploring by myself. There was a large park in a quiet area of town where it wasn’t unusual to be the only person around. I was sitting at the end of a very large rose garden when I noticed a tall skinny guy in a dirty wife beater and jeans standing on the outside of the garden with his dog. Something big like a Rottweiler or pitbull I don’t remember exactly. I just remember being super freaked out because he was just standing there looking directly at me.
I got up and started walking back to my car but he started walking parallel to me matching my pace. When I walked faster he did too. I got my phone and keys out and just kept walking as confidently as I could. I was parked a couple minutes away and over time his pace did slow slightly as mine got faster but I knew he was still behind me. I had a habit of unlocking my car several times with the keyfob because the car beep was satisfying. After I did so the white cargo type van parked next to me unlocked and beeped the exact same amount of times mine did.
At this point I as terrified. I backed out and raced out of the park without even looking behind me. I needed to pick up something from one of the neighborhood Walmarts on the way home so I stopped there and headed inside to calm down. The sun was still out and I’m a guy. I was young, short and slender but I still felt like that somehow protected me. I convinced myself I was being crazy and that guy just happened to be leaving the park when I did. I left the store and started walking to my car when I saw him. The white van was parked directly next to my car and he stood there at the back watching me. No dog this time. All I remember thinking is I had to get into my car because it was the only place I had any leverage. I slow motion got in, backed out, and headed back into a neighborhood where I knew I could zig zag my way around different blocks to try to lose him. I spent 10 minutes looking over my shoulder making random turns before I headed back to my apartment.
Never saw him again and to this day I still feel like I’m in a bit of denial about the whole thing. There were plenty of other cars in the parking lot. It was early evening. If he was trying to kidnap me it was a stupid place to do so. Perhaps he saw how scared I was at the park and just wanted to mess with me. Whatever the case I’ve never been so scared for my own life.
If this ever happens again, or for anyone reading this, the best thing to do if you’re being trailed in a car is to drive to a police station. (Despite the other dangers that can also cause unfortunately)
I’m surprised you actually got in your care at Walmart with the van right next to it. I probably would have gone back inside and asked a security guard to come out with me.
I was young and dumb and had just finished gaslighting myself into thinking that I was being dramatic. It never crossed my mind.
Your story reminded me of an incident I experienced a few years ago. I did grubhub in the evenings and would often hit a 7/11 on my way home for smokes. For context, this place was constantly busy with homeless people and bar-hoppers milling about outside, but they had never bothered me.
One night, a young man in mechanics coveralls approached as I was leaving and bummed a cigarette. As he was lighting it, he asked if I could give him a ride to the Walmart about a mile up the road because he was worn out from his long day. I declined, but he kept pushing. I finally told him I wouldn’t give rides to strangers without my husband along, and he backed off.
As I got into my car to leave, I noticed that this dude walked over to a car parked at the next business over, immediately hopped into the passenger seat and turned to talk to someone in the back. I couldn’t clearly see through their tinted windows to count heads, but I think there were at least 2 other people in the car. I high-tailed it out of there and took the long way home. I suspect it was a setup for a carjacking at best.
Always listen to your gut instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.
Edit: redundancy
Discovered a fire in my garage. My sister had thrown a cigarette butt into an overfull ashtray which was also plastic, something combusted. I was none the wiser though and opened the door to the garage only to be greeted with an opaque, fuckin straight outta Dark Souls lookin, WALL OF GREY SMOKE. I slammed that door in a panic thinking that exact same “I GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE NOW!”, ran out of the house and clicked the garage door opener as I went. We saw rolls of black smoke pour out of there but thankfully it was just a small fire and didn’t reach the walls. Scary shit considering zero smoke detectors went off!
I use a glass jar as my ashtray for this reason (well, also because my cat is a horrible goblin that won’t leave anything alone). Screw the lid on and it doesn’t matter how spicy things get, it’ll run out of oxygen and put itself out.
Ignored the Tornado warning, shouldn’t have.
If there’s one thing that’ll get the Lizard Brain going… it’s the only time I’ve ever felt like something deeper was telling my brain that we had to get the fuck out of here.
Dude… Tell the whole story. It sounds interesting.
There’s an odd greenish haze in the sky that I’ve never seen a camera properly capture and you don’t just hear the sound of the tornado with your ears, you can feel it in your bones first. All of those tiny hairs all across your body, it’s almost like they have an electric charge. When it gets close, the air gets odd and it starts to feel like there’s suddenly not enough of it.
Rationally, it’s a lot of contributing factors getting amped up by the biggest adrenaline rush you’ve ever had. It was my first season after moving a bit farther west than I’d ever been and I felt like I opened the front door to find myself within 100 feet of the thing, but it is hard to trust yourself to look back on something like that with a scientific mind. The feeling I got didn’t even feel like fear, it was just a feeling of ‘have to go’ and I’ve never felt it again. For the actual situation, everything my body was telling me was worthless and nothing I could have done would have done any good if my luck had failed me, but the Tornado was just passing by on it’s way to somewhere else.
This is exactly the feeling. Went through a tornado when I lived in the midwest. It hit two streets over, just missing us. The sirens were going off but we were teenagers and still hanging out on the couch, parents were out. There were a ton of storms growing up where the sirens went off so we were a little desensitized.
Suddenly just knew it was time to go, something was here. Don’t know how else to describe it, the air changes, it’s like the vibrations change in the wind, or a sound that’s too deep to hear. Can’t say exactly, but I still remember the feeling of move now. We all just bolted at the same time and ran to the basement.
Very much had this a couple years ago in KY. I was totally planning on driving through and hoping that the storm wasn’t gonna roll through where I was working, but when I got back to the car and saw just how fucking green the sky was, something inside me said “hey how about we listen to the nice security guard who’s offering shelter in the plant”.
Tornado didn’t even come close to me (about 20 miles south), but it was a wild as fuck storm.
Mine was a bit farther back… would be measured in decades ago, I may turn to dust shortly, but maybe same area. It’s crazy how much the strength of tornadoes ramps up on the western half of the state.
I live close enough to Jarrell to have made some friends who grew up nearby and went to help clean up. Jarrell stories help sober the perspective whenever I’m weighing what chances are worth taking.
When I was young I watched a tornado dip down and rip the top off a cotton-wood tree just to lift it back into the sky like it was having a snack. Next day we found out it had come down half a mile away and crushed 3 cows.
Tornadoes are something else.
was doing a building search of a flooding (from water leak) multi story building and as i was looking around the living room, i felt “time to move to next room” and yeah glad i did. ceiling fell in the living room as i rounded the corner.
these kinds of incidents are always so fascinating.
studies were done on people who had their brain hemispheres separated and it was found that the brains continued to communicate through alternative methods, often providing context to one half of the brain that was unaware of context the other was aware of.
it only proved that our brains are complex machines that are constantly working to ensure our survival. so when you get the nagging feeling you’re in danger, take it seriously because your subconscious has noticed something your consciousness has not.
I was just moved to Italy. I knew no one and I had to do some history assignment for Uni. I went to the city archive looking for some documentation and I was incredibly lost.
Some middle age man approached me and starting helping me around. He talked with everybody there and they all respected them. He was really nice to me all the time. I got into the archive and got everything I wanted. But I was more creepied out each minute. The guy had starting talking about how spaniards(me) and italians needs to be friends because our shared history of friendship with Franco and Mussolini. At the end he asked for my number, he really looked like he was trying to recruit me. I gave him a fake one and moved away. Never got near that location again in all the the time I spent in the city.
The big one for me is when cops are around and people are doing minor crimes (smoking weed, littering, minor speeding) and the cops ignore it. That means the cops are there for major crimes and I don’t want to be around that…
I think you just described every night out I’ve ever had in Baltimore.
lets just say, wild boars are really quite a bit larger than you think.
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuurwerkramp_in_Enschede
I live in this city. We were watching the fireworks depot burning from what we thougt was a safe distance…After the first explosion we knew we were waayyyy to close and left right away. Just minutes later the whole neighbourhood was gone.
There are vídeos on YouTube showing the disaster, it’s scary to watch really
