I was in Japan for a while a few decades ago and I would often just get on a train and go somewhere to see what I’d run into. I didn’t speak any Japanese but I did have some phrases down and a bunch more saved on my phone I could listen to repeatedly and just try to mimic them. Anyway I get turned around and it is getting late, I need to get back on a train so I can head back to where I’m staying for the night, so I ask a random guy in Japanese if he speaks English. He says yes well enough so I explain my situation and ask for direction to the nearest line that’ll get me home.

He proceeds to speak in what he must have thought was English for a solid 5 minutes. I couldn’t understand a single word he said. He pointed in basically every direction at one point or another during the monologue. And I didn’t want to be rude so I listened politely and just planned on thanking him and asking someone else if I could find anyone. But at the end of this huge long gesturing play he was putting on he said in the clearest English with absolutely no accent. “are you picking up what I’m laying down” I’d never heard that phrase before at that time and was absolutely floored. He even nailed the L in laying. I legitimately think even to this day that i was being pranked.

I asked some expat friends who had been living in Japan for a long while and they said there were tons of English phrase books and that was just probably a phrase he practiced a lot. But it was so surreal that every other utterance was so obviously not English.

I thanked the guy and found someone else who literally took me to the station themselves. But it is one of the strongest memories I have from my time there.