...in which our hero finds love (perhaps)

I seem to have acquired a Japanese Girlfriend. Actually, she probably acquired me. I’m not sure. After a number of drunken pashfests and one disturbing encounter with her live-in Brooding Ex Boyfriend, it seems we are now Together. This is actually quite exciting. She’s deliciously complicated. The Japanese-female-submissive-personality graft failed to take in her case, and she’s freer than a lot of her peers, living out of home since her teens, one arm decorated in tattoos she did herself, the other in scars she made to ground herself, a photographer. We went out to an ‘Asian’ restaurant and talked as best we could (she taught herself English from a dictionary) and flirted and I wondered at her – she has to touch objects to see how they feel, extending a questing hand to small Buddha statues and studded belts and tree bark, like a child, wonder in her eyes, and then later, cosier, she paused and thought hard and asked, how do you say in English, ah, ah, will you be with me? and I said, yes, why not. Her laugh is infectious, her English unusually tinged, free of the imprinting of teachers, gravelly (she smokes), full, round, she kisses me in public (very much Not Done here) and we are a Mixed Couple who draw glances and silent opinions. Friday night, we went out to an izakaya with her crazy friends and armwrestled and had chopstick speed races to overcome my lack of Nihongo and then went to karaoke and I sang Sometimes by The Strokes loudly and badly in English and they sang beautifully, with feeling, in Japanese and the drinks were free and the night swam by in cigarette smoke and laughter. At the Asian restaurant, I asked her about her work at a bar and what time she finished and she said four am, mostly, and I said how do you get home, the trains don’t start till 5 and she said taxis (which cost a lot) and I said oh, you must get paid a lot and there was a large pause and she drew on her cigarette and looked at me and decided to trust me. Ok, I will tell you the truth, she said. The truth is that I’m a hostess. I’d wondered about that – she’s free with her money - so it was no real surprise. So she gets paid to flirt with lonely businessmen and encourage them to buy very expensive drinks and one proposed to her two weeks ago. So, this is an interesting development.

---

Before I started seeing K, I dated another girl, N, for a little while, before she went back to her hometown in Kyushu. Dates in Japan include one element which is entirely lacking in Australia – window shopping. Every time I saw N, she dragged me through a number of shops – lolly shops, cute fluffy animal shops – and K does the same, and I had no idea why until one of my conversation students told me it’s puppy love, you both look at cute stuffed toys and the like and go all misty eyed together, and then transfer that to each other.

Dating N was one of the more bizarre experiences I’ve had here. She was a couple of years older, and her sense of obligation to those younger than herself forced her to help pay for my drinks and food. That was nice. But on the flipside, she often treated me like a child, and I teased her a lot, calling her my mother. “Where is your wallet? Haven’t you got a jacket?” she would say. We made an excellent dinner one night and she asked me if I could cook and I said yes, of course, I’ve lived out of home for a while now, and she watched me dubiously as I pushed steak around a pan and said no you can’t, you can’t cook at all and I was kinda offended but said nothing. We spent a lot of time discussing her ex boyfriend (also from Melbourne, which is why she contacted me in the first place) and the inside of her head and she told me a lot about herself and we were very, very different and would never, ever work as a long term thing. She called me ‘simple’ which I considered being offended at, but stopped. I am kinda simple. Or at least, not very complicated. Unlike her. She was a little bit crazy, a self-confessed control freak who made me wash each individual lettuce leaf and forced me to wash my hair ‘properly’ before I saw her again (!) and seeing her was exasperating and hilarious. I asked her once, mock exasperated, how the submissive gene missed her and she smiled and answered seriously. “It is because my mother is very strong, she grew up around foreigners on homestays in her house and she became strong after that,” she said. Her ex boyfriend messed with her head (bipolar, she wondered?) and she couldn’t study for her final exams to be a pharmacist (much more responsibility here than in Australia) and failed and now she has to wait an entire year to retake them – such inflexibility in the system. Then she left, giving me all her food and strict instructions not to use the child tickets on the trains because it was bad and left my life abruptly and then K entered just as quickly. I am very much enjoying the novelty of being foreign.

----

Oh! Hina, my biggest two year old fan has a mother (single) who has also taken a shine to me and on Friday she beckoned me over before she took Hina home and gave me her phone number and told me to call. Amazing. The offer of a Real Family, readymade, right there and then. I am still a wee bit young, methinks.