What’s the weirdest place you’ve made friends in?

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

I’ve made friends in the weirdest places.

But the weirdest one was at 21, the one where I was late for the final exams in law and she was late for her final exams in media and marketing,

I chatted with her while being stuck in a traffic jam in the same bus and we clicked, then we were both running together, as funny as it sounds, we kind of befriended while running and we went there at the last minute together, 🤣🤣

Next thing I remember, she was waiting for me downstairs after exams.

We were friends for over a year after that, until she moved away to another country for her studies.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I have two friends I made bizarrely on overseas business trips. We ended up chatting sitting together on the airplane for so many hours.

One is a woman from Trinidad and Tobago. We ended up connecting so much on the trip that she later came to visit me multiple times in Japan (and with no romantic interest involved whatsoever; she's around 20 years older than me) and even attended my wedding. She keeps inviting me to Trinidad together with my wife to witness Carnival (sounds wild). I've yet to take her up on it but it's on my bucket list.

Another is a man from the US who works as a game developer for Ubisoft. We had that gamedev background in common and ended up talking about that for the entire trip to the point where he also ended up visiting me in Japan.

Also another weird one is MySpace. I had an ancient MySpace profile when I was in university and an Australian girl contacted me and asked me to give her a tour of Japan since she was visiting over the summer. So that seemed so random especially because my MySpace profile just had a brief description of me along with just mostly pictures of my artwork and a few with my colleagues and events where I gave some lectures. I just made it when I was a university student since, back then, friends asked me if I had a MySpace page to connect and so I ended up making a hasty one to connect with them on there.

So I said, "sure, why not?" and met her at Ueno (where I lived in Tokyo at the time) after she arrived from the airport and she turned out to be this really eccentric girl from a rich family with endless money to spend, having me tag along on her shopping sprees as she bought the most expensive designer-brand clothes and even paying for my fancy meals as I gave her tours of Tokyo. She had to return to Australia but tends to visit Japan again once every few years and also ends up visiting me along the way. It still always perplexed me why she picked me or even trusted me as a complete stranger with nothing but a minimalist MySpace profile so much this way, but she became like a little sister to me and also attended my wedding.

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

I’ve heard of Ueno, from the Norwegian Wood.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I didn't realize that part! The kanji (上野) refers to the upper parts of a field. I ended up living there for a few years when I first returned to Japan. Then later Kichi-Joji and Asagaya. It was a fun little district with Ameyoko (big shopping district) and a really nice park. Also right next to Asakusa which was one of my favorite districts (very traditional).

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

Sounds like a very nice place! I will visit someday.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I think you'll enjoy it. If you enjoy any nightlife though, I think the absolute best clubs and bars (as well as just the most fun restaurants late at night) are in Shibuya (probably my favorite place when I was young) followed by Shinjuku and Roppongi. I miss Tokyo a lot sometimes, although I feel too old to live there nowadays. 😅

https://youtu.be/m7htXCumsn0

I always tried to live by the philosophy that the next stranger we talk to has the potential to become our best lifelong friend.

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

Haha, I’ve heard of Shibuya too. A lot. I think every young person’s dream is to party in Shibuya.

I’ve partied hard in Shanghai, but can probably be better in Tokyo.

I am not so much into nightlife anymore though.

But maybe I’ll party there once or twice, just for the sake of it.

Haha, can one feel too old for Tokyo?

And yes, I love that philosophy of yours!

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

On the part about feeling too old for Tokyo, I had to mull over that one for a bit. I think when we're younger and more adventurous, there's endless excitement in cities like Tokyo which offer an endless sea of new faces and things to do all around the clock. Yet it's also extremely active and busy; lots of people in Tokyo live to work and party: work extremely hard but also party extremely hard in our free time. That requires enormous energy and takes its toll after a while.

Also there's a kind of loneliness to it that can kick in after a while. Initially Tokyo seems like the last place where anyone can get lonely since there's endless new people to meet, but the overwhelming sea of unfamiliar faces and places tends to drown out the familiar. Also because Tokyo citizens are so used to being surrounded by new people, they tend to take that for granted and largely ignore new faces.

On the flip side, I find the smallest towns to be too familiar for my comfort. I also find a lot of small towners too lacking in ambitions and a sense of adventure for my taste -- even at my age -- where their idea of having a fun time might be to routinely go to the one bowling alley in town every single weekend. It's too routine, too familiar, for my tastes. I get bored.

So I find, at the stage I'm in now, that I tend to favor something between these two extremes. That suits me well. The town I live in now is like that. It's not too small that I feel drowned by the familiar but not too large that I feel drowned by the unfamiliar.

[Anonymous]

Rehab.

Specifically rehab for gambling disorder. My roommate is 70 years old.

Gamblers Anonymous. My friends here in the program are from all walks of life. Recent sports bettors, horse track gamblers, slot machine enthusiasts, lottery players looking at street signs and license plates for numbers to play, scratch off fiends, card and table game connoisseurs, and online gambling.

From young men and woman to people over twice my age. All with an addiction that started off as harmless which led to financial, emotional, and spiritual bankruptcy. Suicide attempts, suicidal ideation, complete destruction of jobs, careers, businesses, households, and relationships without the use of a substance.

In the midst of chaos that is our lives, we bond over a fact that there is hope, and a light that is available for all of us.

Substance abusers, counselors, therapists, and psychologists that do not understand, or care. That think it is a joke or worse an intellectual problem, that we are stupid.

I am currently at the birthplace of problem gambling treatment in the United States. Some states have only two or three certified gild-standard counselors for their respective states.

There is only ONE place that offers this treatment for Active Duty US military personnel and Veterans in the United States through the VA, while substance abuse is offered at every VA Hospital in the country.

The next great epidemic in the US won't be a drug related one, it will be problem or compulsive gambling, because of the rate of adoption of legal, socially acceptable, and socially encouraged avenues of gambling offered through apps on the smart phone, which provide betting on anything.

The friends I've made understand me, accept me, and truly care about me - more than any family member could where I am at in my life right now.

When I walk into a meeting and say: Hi, my name is _______, and I am a compulsive gambler. I am at home even though I don't have one at this time, and that to me is a beautiful thing.

I implore you to look up the 20 questions of Gamblers Anonymous and answer them honestly. No other Anonymous program has this feature of questions that pinpoint directly if you have a problem or not. If you answer "Yes" to 7 or more out of these 20 questions, chances are that you are a compulsive gambler.

[Drew-1990]

That would be one of my current and longest friends. Me and him use to not get alone he always tried to pick on me and tick me off. We only hung out through a mutual friend as a group. One day the mutual friend who was getting in my nerves lately and getting weirder and more annoying by the day left us alone to go pick up something. I don't remember who but one of us said "gosh he is annoying, I'm getting sick of him" and then the other went "me too" then we became best buddies after that. We were younger at the time but we're still good friends to this day. He still picks on me but I pick on him back. We are the definition of frenemies, some people think we hate each other the way we act lol

[exitseven]

I was in the hospital for a month when I was 19. There wa a guy on my surgical floor tht was my age that had the same kind of surgery. We hung out together. We had wheelchair races in the hall. We used to "accidently" drop something on the floor so we could watch one of the nurses bend over and pick it up for us. This was when nurses wore those short white dresses. A few days before we got out we snuck out to the store across the street and bought a six pack and drank it on the roof. My operation was successful, his was not. He needed a do-over so I came back and visited him a few times.

[Anonymous]

A field hospital in a war zone.

I had a bullet rip through my ass cheek. And upper leg. During an ambush they lit me up. Because I was the first guy up front.
I fought my way out of it But eventually lost so much blood I couldn’t walk.

I got dragged out and thrown into a truck. when I got to the field hospital

The guy next to me had part of his face shot off the morning before…..:
we started talking and telling eachother our stores. What happened to us. And what we saw.

this guy got pinned in a house. And they shot up the house top to bottom. And that’s how he got hit.

we became great friends and shared a mutual suffering.

[AviatorTom]

Many years ago, I was in this tiny bar in a back street in Shanghai China, late at night. The bar was run by two sisters, who kept asking me to marry them so they could get to Canada.

For the week I and my colleagues were in Shanghai, they were our friends, and we were at the bar most nights.

[Summeroflove]

Absolutely you can make friends almost anywhere. I just am causations on who I let into my personal circle. Sometimes you meet people who seem like good upstanding people, only to find out later they have nefarious intentions or are lunatics, maybe both sometimes.

[Dr_CEI]

The weirdest time I ever made a friend is when I turned up at a local pub to make a drug deal, this girl called me over to sit next to her she just started chatting then showed me a video of her boyfriends BBC and the rest is history we are best mates and share absolutely everything

[BoopBoopBeep]

Probably a war zone

[LaFemmeFatale_1]

I wouldn’t say that’s a weird place, you must have made some amazing, loyal friends there.

[BoopBoopBeep]

True. Just not one of those places I can go back to and relive the old days or anything. At least not yet.

[RebelinSteel]

In a snow hole up in Northern Norway, we had a week of stuff to do and pretty much thrown in with a bunch of people I do not normally work with. Still keep in touch and likely doing Finland this summer.

[ab2shifty]

When I was a kid, me and my homies were walking around and somehow ended up at someone’s funeral. We had no clue it was a funeral tho, so we went up to it and just stood there with the crowd. Then we saw another group of kids walk to the crowd, and basically the same thing happened to them that happened to us 🤣 then we wall started talking and became friends while at someone’s random funeral 🤣

[aceleon]

in the sea.

i was just swimming and we just hit it, at least for the rest of the day.

[Sharkstealth]

In thr army we laugh about making friends in the toilet room because there are no walls in between the toilets.

[Huntingnfishin]

McDonald's ball pit like 20 years ago! Since then just sadness

[Paris13]

Perhaps in Egypt. lolxxoo

[Jennz6]

In a Strip Club

[ritxi]

In a trainiing sesion before working.

[itsclearlynicholas]

Volunteering gigs, phew 😌😅

[Staximus]

In traffic court haha

[Zoi99]

Jail for protesting something.

[Yannae]

Escape room.

[Dongie]

Jail