Let's crush a few walls

After the wedding I hadn't run into Hiro that much...at least until a few weeks ago. He is really into this hip-hop class and some of my other friends wanted to join. I was forced to act as intermediate and ended up joining too. Since Hiro lives in my town we usually go together with his other friend. Last week he had done the driving because his friend couldn't make it. I was nervous, but surprised myself by holding up conversation. I look stupid dancing, even when I am doing it right, so I feel like he has seen me pretty grunged up. It doesn't get much worse than me, red-faced and sweaty in old workout clothes attempting to do the running man. He is about my height. Translation: too short. He is cute, but not stunningly handsome. Not to mention I could never talk to him without first being absolutely plastered at a party. He is 26 years old. A nice age. Aged to perfection in some ways. Now that I've finally joined this hip-hop class I see him at least every other week and conversation just keeps getting easier.

Oh and his smile keeps getting cuter.

A lot of my fluttery feelings come from left over intimidation and the fact a young guy is paying attention to me. I don't think we are genuinely suited for each other and there is zero attraction from his side for me. But this time I'm not going to try and talk myself out of liking someone. I'm going to enjoy the ride and the smiles and the way he says my name. His laugh always sounds like it's punctuated by surprise. He has this sense of humor underneath the shyness and he loves what he loves. He doesn't hide who he really is, he just doesn't offer it up for public consumption in an obvious way.

No matter what happens at least now I'm happy to see him and not cringing in anticipation of being a dork in front of him. He wants me to help him practice his English a bit. Trying to look cute while demonstrating the difference between L and R with your tongue is not one of my strong points. He copied my exaggerated tongue articulations. Oh dear that was rather sexy. There are more upsides to being an English teacher than I had thought.

Starting to appreciate weddings

This past weekend was B's wedding. The ceremony and reception were small, but beautifully done. I don't think I've cried at a wedding that much before, but it seemed fairly normal as even the older more composed men wiped at their eyes. I'm sure the constant pour of beer into everyone helped.

At our table of 7 I was seated between N (a fellow English teacher friend) and Hiro. Hiro works in the same office B and I do, but in a different department. Hiro has always intimidated me. Not in a scary overbearing way, but he just strikes me as one of those too cute, too cool guys that would never give me the time of day. He and B are good friends, so I have hung out with him a few times at parties and dinners. The whole time I'm usually tongue-tied and surprisingly, despite first impressions, Hiro a shy guy. I think he speaks and understands a lot more English than what he lets on, but our awkward conversations are usually all in Japanese. Of course I was nervous sitting next to him for a 4 hour reception where neither of us knew many other people.

After table introductions and some general comments about how pretty B looks, Hiro leans over and says he saw Sar and I the other night at the local convenience store. He gives me a sly look and asks, "Karaoke?" Damn he actually does know a bit about me. I give the affirmative and he chuckles, "Yeah I've seen you guys two or three times at that time of night." I haven't even started drinking yet, but my face is flushed. I'm always really loud and drunk right after karaoke parading around town. Plus if he has seen us that many times recently why didn't he say hi? Somehow I manage to form a proper Japanese sentence and say (in what I hope was a casual tone), "So how about next time you come with us?" Another smile from him and he suggests we exchange cell phone information! YES!

The reception goes on and at the end as everyone stands up to leave he pulls out his cell phone and wiggles it in my direction (that sounds so very bad). I have to be the one to say "Let's exchange!” but in any case it got done. Since he might even be shyer than I am, I'll have to make the next step and the whole conversation implied group activities, but still yay!

Country roads take me home

It's always nice to start things off by establishing a bit of setting. My position is in a very rural city. We are talking hardcore countryside. (Now I'm picturing the locals wearing leather and chains while walking around with their thumbs up going "ehhhhh". Since when was hardcore defined by The Fonz? What's wrong with my brain? Oops that would be another tangent.) The population of my city is 33,000, which doesn't sound too bad except we are the largest city by leaps and bounds in a two-hour radius.

Rural towns and cities in Japan are beautiful, peaceful, traditional, friendly, and dying. Young adults go to the big cities for college (Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, etc) and very few ever look back. This leaves most towns with a population consisting mainly of young children and the elderly. The last time I checked the population growth wars the elderly were kicking major school children butt. If I happen to see a guy that looks about my age he is either in high school (may be cute, but I'm not going there), or he is in his late 30s with a wife and two kids (also going to have to pass on that).

I love where I live, but it doesn't provide me with the choicest options. Internet dating and websites seem to be the way to go. That is unless you're my friend R who manages to drive 3 hours one way every weekend to Osaka and club hop. That boy has a mystic power all his own. The other dating bloggers, who I am secretly jealous of and adore by the way, seem to pick up a lot of dates on Internet sites like match.com and eharmony. What's a girl to do in Japan?

There are a few options I've discovered so far. I already mentioned Asoboo! in an earlier post. There is also a good pen-pal forum on Japan Guide. In their rules they say you can not use the ad listings to look for a date, but that seems to be what at least 75% of the ads are doing either covertly or openly. I posted an ad to find people who wanted to trade English practice for Japanese and I ended up with a 90% male response. People should go into this site looking for friends and you might make a connection, or new friends are good too! For people with decent Japanese a lot of people use the chat and message boards on Yahoo! Japan. Yahoo! was able to get a good foothold in Japan before other similar companies, so it is well used. I need to hunt more of my friends down for ideas.

I swear the next post will actually have something to do with an actual date...

Sponging from my friends

My friend Sar's favorite rant is the lack of kissing on Japanese television. Two people can wake up naked next to each other. People can run around almost naked. Sexual tension can hold Tokyo hostage, but the big pay off for most tv dramas is the most chaste little lip lock during the last episode. Argh put some feeeeeling into it (or at least a good grope and a bit o' tongue eh!). Bring me my Sex and the City DVDs post haste! Sexually frustrated, moi? Not worth thinking about I'm afraid.

Another friend (a fellow American), who works in the same office is getting married to a great Japanese guy in a few weeks. This will be my first traditional Japanese wedding. I can't wait to go. However B has had to adjust to a lot of things that go along with dating and marrying a Japanese man, which I'll get into in a different post. Watching her do the marriage dance affirms that I'm in no hurry to walk down the aisle (breaking my poor mother's heart here).

Dredging up a bit of recent history

This doesn't really have anything to do with dating in Japan, but it's been on my mind the last few days. Partway into my junior year of college I became friends with a guy in my Japanese class. Justy was a broad-framed geeky gamer with a streak of proud Scottish heritage. We both got to Japanese class early and struck up a friendship. He had a great sarcastic streak and could keep almost any conversation topic going. It used to be fun to get bubble tea after classes and hang out playing jenga and chatting. At first I had a growing crush on him, but never seriously considered a relationship.

He dated disasters. Every one of his ex-girlfriend stories were filled with crazies. All of them except for his current girlfriend, soon to be fiancée. I didn't know about her the first few months we were talking. Sometimes I don't know if I ever seriously wanted to date Justy. He could get on my nerves. I always seem to be attracted to and repelled by guys who will use straight conventional logic to undermine my more fanciful theories. Just let me rationalize and make up facts every once in awhile, yeesh! However, I do know that we had a good friendship and I felt comfortable talking to him about almost anything. I don't find this with guys very often.

When I saw a picture of his girlfriend the first time I got that sharp pang of jealousy and started comparing myself to her. I was prettier than she was, I was smarter, more ambitious, more fashionable, had more things in common with him, etc. I had all these terrible thoughts. He didn't help the situation at all by constantly saying things like "if I hadn't met my girlfriend you and I might have dated", or "you're my type". After all the crazies he dated though maybe that last one isn't a compliment. One day he sent me a link to take the match.com personality test and our results were eerily similar. He again made a point of saying we would have been a good match if only he wasn't so in love with his fiancée. I mean what the hell is up with that? Was he trying to keep me on a back burner in case things with her failed? Was he just too honest for his own good? Clueless? Was he teasing me? Trying to boost his ego?

By the time I met his girlfriend she must have heard enough about me that she was suspicious and hovered around him, while simultaneously giving me "back away from my boy" looks. I decided I didn't need any of this and was more than happy to appear as uninterested as possible. Eventually she calmed down enough to stop imprinting her fingerprints into his arm every time I showed up. She's really a good person. I like her well enough and think they make a cute couple. Last year Justy and I both graduated from college. I moved to Japan. He and his girlfriend got married this year and we haven't talked much since. It's partly the time difference. We have very different responsibilities now. We are both lazy bastards. I still have his wedding gift sitting on the floor of my office. I'll send it out one of these days.

I miss talking to him regularly. It's as ridiculously simple as writing an e-mail. Why does it feel all sorts of complicated?

Better communication, paranoia ho!

When I was still in the states my cell phone was this ancient Nokia model stripped down to basics. In Japan I'm rocking a 1.3 megapixal camera, full color, Internet, and personal cell phone e-mail. I used to forget my old cell phone all the time and now I can't fall asleep without my new one being in the same room!

In Japan it's exhorbitantly expensive to call someone (none of those 600 night and weekend minutes free deals here!), but all text messaging is free. It's not just simple text messaging either it's an actual e-mail address that can be used like any other free e-mail on the web. This is the best way to communicate.

On Saturday a group of new and old English teachers in my area got together for a day at the beach. I tend to be out in the middle of nowhere, so I don't make a huge effort at getting to know people who are more than two hours away by train, but a day at the beach is not something to be ignored. Surprisingly enough one of the new guys in our program was a rather talkative, cute Brit. I'll call him Wallace (from Wallace and Gromit) because of the way his voice modulates when he tells stories. Wallace ended up having dinner with myself and two of my friends in the program. At the end of the night we all exchanged cell phone information.

Not trying to be pushy I e-mailed his cell the next day with a casual "Did you make it home alright?". Then I waited...and waited...I didn't think he was going to call me. Actually it would have been awkward at best if he had, but I wanted that special e-mail song to play. Finally he got back to me with a friendly message. I decided to wait 3 hours (to not appear overly eager) and then threw a light joke his way. Two days, no response. I guess I never expected one and if anything I didn't feel a spark, but... Everytime my phone does it's little e-mail buzzer/song dance of joy my body tenses in anticipation only to have the eventual release tinted with a hint of dissapointment. If this was regular Internet e-mail I don't think I would care so much. The cell phone is like a two day IM gone unanswered. An urgent missive left unloved in it's bottle. Argh I'm getting mellowdramatic about a silly cell e-mail.

Still I wouldn't mind a buzz or two.

Hanging in the shallow end of Internet dating

There are several penpal/dating sites that cater to both foreigners and Japanese looking to hook up. One of the most popular is Asoboo, which is especially popular with the foreign English teacher population in Japan. You can write up a quick profile, put a silly pixel avatar picture up and away you go! I made a profile on a whim and forgot all about it.

Checking my e-mail today I found two e-mails from Asoboo from the same Japanese guy who actually lives in the next prefecture over from me. He seems friendly, not too old, good English...and yet...if he was farther away I would respond without a second thought. The fact he lives so close makes me nervous.

It seems stupid that I keep putting out these feelers on the Internet, but when it comes to someone who might be close enough to actually meet me I freak out and stop responding. E-mail is so easy to ignore. To respond or not to respond? What am I afraid of more, him not liking me, or me not liking him? Oh and somehow the possibility he is a crazy psycho doesn't come into this. oops, internet dating the stupid way. Desperation does not a pretty pretty princess make.