Kyoto legend in the making?

[calger459]

Hello everyone! I had an interesting conversation with my sister the other day, and I was curious to know how many other people had had this experience. I spent a year in Japan and visited Kyoto four times on vacations. My sister did a 4-month study abroad homestay in Kyoto. Walking around one day, she ran into this weird old man with good English

Comments

[amabaku]

How odd? I was in Kyoto for quite a while last year and never ran into him. But i know there are alot of universities there maybe he actually finished his Thesis. ^-^

Seen him..

[anonymous]

.. and helped him. Told me he was a Kyoto Uni prof. It was a few years back though. Haven't seen him since.

[stochasticjack]

Oh God, THAT guy...

I used to work in Kyoto Station. On my very first day working there in 2003, this crazy little guy came up to me and said, "Hello, welcome to Kyoto!" I thought he was some local volunteer, Welcome-Wagon sort of guy, so I started chatting with him. It didn't take long to realize that he was kind of nuts.

From that point on, whenever my co-workers and I would go to McDonald's in Kyoto Tower for our lunch break, this guy would materialize out of nowhere: "Hello, welcome to Kyoto!" He never remembered us from time to time, and sometimes would follow us all the way to Mackers and back. (He would never go inside the station building itself, keeping a wary eye on the Koban in front and veering off at the last minute.)

I finally moved back to the US when Nova went under last fall.

Guess who I ran into that morning at the station?