Whats the most odd, crazy, or weird thing that has happened to you traveling in Japan

[Margaretta]

Hi everyone, Japan can be such a crazy place at times, I would be interested to hear all your odd, crazy, or weird things that have happened to you while traveling around this wonderful country.

I'll give you my example ... I was traveling on a train in Osaka filled with mostly business people going home from work, everybody was as usual minding their own business in the very Japanese polite way. But suddenly these two Japanese guys started arguing about something. At first their voices were a little loud, I noticed and looked at them, but nobody else seemed to notice the slowly rising tension.
Eventually these two guys were practically yelling at each other and it looked like things were going to get physical. But the strange thing was I seemed to be the only one noticing this, nobody else was looking at what was going on, they all had their heads down reading a book, looking at their phone or 'pretending' to be asleep. Even those people next to the argument didn't look at what was going on, they just shuffled a few inches sideways as much as possible away from the scene without looking up!
I felt like I was imagining the whole thing!

Really looking forward to hearing everyone's weird experience!

[iron bark]

Tell you what's weird is the Japanese way of telling you to come in or come here with their hand gesture. We were standing outside a Kyoto restaurant wondering if we should go in or not, and a Japanese lady appeared and seemed to gesture for us to go away!, which seemed a bit rude as it was plainly open for business, so we left anyway as we were undecided about the menu.

Found out later that the Japanese way to say come here with your hand is the opposite of the western way of your palm facing up and the fingers moving back and forth. The Japanese have the palm facing down and move the fingers vigorously back and forth which to us looks like they are shooing us away.

So the lady in the restaurant was actually encouraging us to come into her restaurant, lol

[minervasirius]

Most foreigners who get to to go to Japan will definitely try that bowing scenes they see in movies which some may find weird.
They will try to find out when they will stop bowing.

iron bark, lol I know right? The palm facing up or down isn't an issue because people have different style for hand action for come / come here.
The telling difference will be, is the hand movements of all the fingers.
If the direction starts from you to him then he/she is definitely telling you to come.
But if if is from him to you, then "go away" haha