Walking Scared

I was walking up the stairs to Umeda station from the Tanimachi line early on Saturday morning. I work in Hyogo prefecture in the city of Nishinomiya and take the Tanimachi line from my home to Umeda and walk to Hankyu station to arrive at Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi station by 9:00 am. This particular morning as I come through the gates on my way to the Hankyu side of Umeda I see a disturbing image in the distance.

The woman, roughly about 40 to mid 50's, is 170 cm tall with a long face and Japanese. Her face is painted completely white with red lipstick and heavily painted dark mascara around her eyes. The only similarity I'm able to come up with is Heath Ledger's Joker for the Dark Knight Returns. I've seen this woman before stalking around the stairs to Hankyu mall. At that time she was with another women with similar make up and bad sense of style. They were lurking about and seemed super supicious.

As I'm walking my way down the long hallway I avoid eye contact, keeping my head down and walking at a brisk pace. Across the main vein of the Umeda underground is a hallway leading to the Hankyu station. Down that hall are many restaurants, bakeries, and drinking spots. It's a popular throughway for people who aren't interested in walking on the street. It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter, plus you can see some of the most beautiful and cute women available to set your gaze upon. If your into Asian girls, of course.

On this particular day, a very beautiful girl was walking in the opposite direction wearing tight 90's style Jordache jeans. Her face was quite small and cute while her body was tall and lean. She seemed a little disproportionate but looked good regardless. Her hair was very long with red highlights tied up in a ponytail. As we passed by each other we made brief eye contact and kept walking to our designated destinations.

As I was walking, I turned left to the two escalators that take you up to the outside of Hankyu mall. While standing on the  first escalator I could hear a loud stomping behind me. The escalator is very narrow with no way to get around a person if your in a hurry, so I did the polite thing and began to walk up the escalator. Once on the second escalator I turned to see who was behind me and there she was, the Joker! She was following me and muttering in her best English for me to stop to have a chat.

I was a bit freaked out and began to walk faster doing my best to ignore what was happening. On top of the escalator I took a right towards the station. I could still hear the sound of shoes clunking behind me when I felt a touch on my hand. Freaked out I raised my hands up like there was a gun being pointed at me, palms open and kept walking. I looked behind me and something had fallen on the ground. It was money! She had tried to put money in my hand. I watched her as she bent down to pick it up and kept coming after me. She tapped me on the arm and I said "No, thank you." I sped up my pace and never stopped to listen to what she was trying to say.

I glided across the walkalator went straight up the escalator to Hankyu station. At the top of the escalator was my co-worker, he had played Terminator at Universal Studios Japan, rushing towards the ticket station. I ran up to him quickly explaining my situation, "Hey, this creepy woman is following me trying to give me money." He looked at me quizzically and proceeded to buy his ticket when the woman appeared next to him.

Startled, as he should be, he did his best to ignore her but she kept muttering something in English that we couldn't understand. He finally turned and said, "No, we don't want any." We went through the gates and headed toward the train. After sitting down I explained the story to him and shared a laugh about this peculiar situation that had occurred.