VERY SCARY!

To understand my adventure today, we must backtrack to last Thursday.

~*~
I was going home on the 4:19 train after school on Thursday. I actually got to the station a little early so I decided to sit down and listen to some music while I waited for the train. Shortly after I sat down, a man (I would describe him as 45-50 years old) sat down next to me. He was wearing a medical mask so I really couldnt tell what he looked like. At first he did nothing but then he handed me a sample/advertisment towel. I remember when I went to Tokyo two years ago that many people give out free samples, including tissues and towels to advertise things. I said thank you for the towel and turned away. However the man continued to stare at me. He then started asking me very weird questions, his first being "Do you have a friend to ride home with?" (Note, he first started talking to me in Japanese very quickly so I replied that I don't understand...so he continued to talk to me only in English). He asked me many other questions too, having to with why I was here, if I went to school, if I was on a home stay, and what my hobbies were. I tried to keep my answers short and vague because I really didnt want him to know too much about me. And when the train arrived, I tried to move towards a different car away from where I was sitting...but he followed me. And when I sat down, he stood right in front of me and continued asking questions. Putting it lightly, I really wanted to get off the train :( When I reached the train station, I quickly got off and he thankfully did not follow. Im not sure what I would have done if he did.... >.<

I told my host sister, host mother, and English teacher about this. My host mother contacted AFS and I talked breifly with the Fukui President about the 'scary man' as I described him to my sister. My English teacher thought that maybe he was interested in my culture, however I dont know why he would ask if I had a friend to ride the train with or stare at me the way he did. It was just very, very unpleasant. Thankfully Ive ridden the train three times (although at different times) home since then and there is no sign of him.

And ANYWAY, today I was escorted by the POLICE to the train station. They were very nice and of course wanted me to be safe, but it was very um, attention drawing for lack of a better word. If you could imagine the exchange student + the police I turned a lot of heads :( However I met another girl from my school at the train staion; the policeman asked her to stay with me on the train after the train arrived. She was very nice, and I actually managed to have a brief conversation in Japanese with her about the scary man. So I suppose out of all this mess, I managed to score some language use points! My English teacher also told me that tomorrow, the police want to ask me questions about this scary man, so I have that to look forward to >.< Errrr why meeeee

I wasnt going to update my blog so soon, however after today I thought this was blog worthy. And most importantly, I wanted to tell everyone that despite all this, Im doing okay. Like I said, I havent seen this man again and with the precautions that the Japanese police are taking, hopefully I will never see him again :)

Everybody else take care too!

Love, Molly