It was almost 1 AM in my city when the little “ping” lit up my screen.
The message was simple:
“Hey, do you watch anime?”
I didn’t know this person. All I had was a username, a profile picture of a blurry Tokyo street, and the fact that they’d joined Traferr a week ago.
Normally, I’d have ignored it. Random messages at night are usually a one-way ticket to either spam, small talk, or someone trying to sell you something you don’t need. But this one felt different — no “hi dear,” no fake flattery, just straight to the point.
So I replied.
“Yeah… depends which one.”
They sent me a photo — not of themselves, but of a ramen bowl and a paused laptop screen showing a scene from Cowboy Bebop.
That’s how it started.
We began trading anime recommendations like kids swapping candy. They told me about how Tokyo streets feel at midnight — quieter, but somehow alive. I told them how my city’s late nights are more about honking rickshaws and chai stalls.
Somewhere between discussing whether Your Name was overrated and which Studio Ghibli film could fix a bad day, we drifted into talking about life.
About how they were between jobs.
About how I was between… well, phases.
About how both of us hated the feeling that conversations online had become a performance — curated, filtered, scored by likes.
At one point, I asked why they messaged me.
“Because your profile said you like ‘random late-night conversations with strangers.’”
And then they added, “It sounded better than posting a story no one cares about.”
That hit.
We weren’t there for follows. We weren’t trying to be interesting for an audience. We were just… talking. The way conversations used to be before everyone decided to become their own PR manager.
Hours passed. I learned they loved vending machine coffee because it “tastes like 100 yen and bad decisions.”
They learned I had a soft spot for badly drawn anime fight scenes from the 90s.
At 4:07 AM my time, they sent:
“I’m going to bed. Big day tomorrow. Thanks for keeping me company.”
It felt like the end of a small movie — one that didn’t need a sequel, but left you glad it happened.
The next day, I opened Traferr and saw they’d updated their status:
“Talking to strangers is better than scrolling strangers.”
Couldn’t agree more.
It’s funny — in a world where everyone is screaming for attention, the quietest conversations are the ones that stick.
A chat about anime in the middle of the night might not change the world, but it can change how you feel about it.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
So here’s my takeaway:
If you’re up at 1 AM and someone asks you about anime — or music, or street food, or anything that isn’t your follower count — maybe answer.
You never know when a stranger in Tokyo will remind you why you started talking in the first place.lore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
