At the airport getting ready to depart Japan, completely exhausted, I plopped myself and my bags down on a bench.Soon after, two women dressed all in white appeared and sat on either side of me, smiling. The one on the right asks "hello, where are you from?"
"I'm from the United States"
"oooh" they both say and this is the moment I was already sure they were doing a bit. Then the one on the left asks "what brought you to Japan?"
"Oh, I was here to perform, I played a couple of concerts."
"oooh" they both say. Then the one on the right says "you are a singer, I believe, yes? I think you are a singer?"
"Well, yes, sort of.......it's strange stuff, sort of hard to describe".
"Yes, I can feel your very big energy. Can I listen to your music?"
I say sure and she hands me her phone. I type in "id m theft able", thinking maybe she'll check it out later, but no, she copies the text, goes right to youtube, and plays the first video that pops up, which is someone's vinyl rip of my "Babb's Bridge" LP. I hear the opening track start up and try to explain "like I said, it's unusual stuff, and this track doesn't really have a lot of vocals......"
Both women become wide eyed, alternating between passing the phone back and forth and looking at me with........well, I want to say "feigned fascination or respect", but who the hell am I to say what's feigned and what's not here? They both occasionally make approving noises while nodding but look very uncomfortable at the same time.
After about 90 seconds of the track the woman on the right stops the track and asks "are you familiar with Mount Fuji?" I tell her that I am, deliriously imagining how Babb's Bridge could possibly lead to Mount Fuji.....
"On top of Mount Fuji, there is a God" here she said the name, but I won't try to recall it from memory, it started with a K sound "and that God has great healing power. I can tell that you are in need of healing and I can give you that if you just let me help you for two minutes.
At this, I got nervous, immediately thinking money was about to be involved and half-fibbed "thank you, but I have to get in line now".
They politely said okay, but then their faces both went blank as they started to scan the airport for another person to approach.
My biggest regret of the trip is not just following through here and seeing what happened next, I would have been fine either way.
A quick internet search reveals this is actually a pretty common occurrence, tourists getting approached with grandiose Mount Fuji related promises of various sorts, but I bet it's the first such occasion during which some of "Babb's Bridge" was played.