Yes, this is legit, and the story is hilarious.
So, my husband was approached by a young woman and her mother about being an English tutor for her (the daughter). He made plans to meet up with said daughter one evening, under the understanding that they were meeting up to get coffee and practice English.
Well, they guided him to a random office building-turned-Buddhist community center, already had a paper filled out (only needing his name and birthday), marched him upstairs, and he found himself front and center doing a 5-minute long special prayer/chant (he had read from a book while holding beads) and then a woman read off of an official looking sheet while facing him. Then they dropped him back off at the train station, essentially saying "oh! It's too bad we didn't get to practice any English, maybe next time!"
Then she asked about meeting again and my husband was like "uh... I'm good..." but he wanted me to go to see if this was just a random thing. I agreed to meet for lunch, and then exact same thing happened! I tried to [politely] weasel out of it, but the passive-aggressive way they pushed me into it was... clearly effective?
Now my husband and I have matching beads and are planning on ghosting this family.
The end. Thoughts?