I had an amusing run in with some JWs a couple months back.
See, back in America, I always just used to say “I’m jewish” and they’d leave me alone (perhaps because very few jews convert, or just assuming I was going to hell anyway or something, even though we don’t believe in hell).
Anyway, I’m in my apt one evening, watching a movie or some such, and I get a knock at the door. Thinking my parents might have sent me a surprise care package containing mac&cheese, refried beans, or some other such delicacy, I eagerly hop up and run to the door, swing it open with a grin on my face, and come face to face with two small japanese women. They almost shat their pants. You could hear them both thinking “oh crap, a gaijin, what do we do now?!”
They started out the usual japanese way, asking if I could speak japanese, then they began talking about god, which is when I noticed the pamphlets. I politely told them I was a jew, and I swear to the gods their eyes almost popped out of their skulls. Not only had they come face to face with a gaijin, but a real live yudaijin to boot! I was, apparently, the first jew they’d ever encountered (I’m the first jew a lot of people here encounter, it’s very weird. Some of my students freaked the fuck out when I did a lesson on different holidays people in america celebrate back in December).
They start coming at me with all these over-the-top questions, not the least of which was “do you believe in god?!” (remember, this is all in Japanese, and my skill in said language, while passable, is not up to debating theology. Hell, I probably can’t even discuss the merrits of a pair of shoes) so, trying not to laugh at their ignorance and the fact that I can clearly see their shock/fear battling it out with their unabashed curiosity, I politely explain that yes, Jewish people do believe in god, yes, we do have a religious book (I told them “you know the bible? Take the first half, that’s us”) and that Jesus himself was a jew and so forth and so on. They promised they’d come back with an english-speaking colleague, thank the gods they never did.
All in all one of the more amusing encounters with the religo’s I’ve ever had