I was on my way home after school. That meant walking from the Air Force base to the Fussa train station.
Right outside the base, there are a lot of bars. Bars that employ young Asian (not Japanese) women as “hostesses” and perhaps even sex workers. I, a young half-Asian mixed girl, had been mistaken for one of these women before, by a man who profusely apologized after asking me on my way to school, “What time are you open?”
I remember what I was wearing: A light blue shirt and light blue trackpants. I was covered from head to toe, no cleavage to show, no legs exposed. I looked every bit like the student I was.
A car pulled over on the other side of the road.
A young man got out.
“Asobo?” He called out.
Loosely translated, “Let’s play.”
I had no doubt what he meant and what he thought I was.
He followed me, continue to call out: “Asobo? Asobo?” He got louder, sounding more forceful.
I refused to turn around and soon he stopped following me.
I hadn’t told my father and my stepmother about the previous encounters. But this was the last straw. I didn’t feel safe.
I bravely brought it up. My stepmother shrugged it off. “It happens to everybody,” she says. To her, it was no big deal. Men were perverts who harassed schoolgirls and what happened to me was normal enough.
I hoped my father would offer to drive me to school. But he didn’t. Thankfully, I never encountered another incident like that for the last remaining months of school.
I used to laugh when I told this story. I was mistaken for a prostitute, could you believe it? But it’s not funny, not anything about it is funny. Not for the women of other Asian countries working at those bars and certainly not for me, a fifteen-year-old girl.
– Anonymous
Location: Fussa, Japan
Share your street harassment story for the blog.
See the book 50 Stories about Stopping Street Harassers for more idea
