デートがあった！(I Had a Date!)

(Kyoto Part Two is coming soon, but I wanted to interject just for a moment. And family, please don't be alarmed upon reading this entry.)

Now I don’t usually go around putting my love life up on my blog, but I just had a date I can’t keep quiet about. I’d had my eye on this Japanese guy who works at Softbank at Yamada Denki for a couple of months now, and when I ran into him with a couple of bilingual ALTs at the end of December, it seemed like fate was on my side. I ended up giving him my email address, and he sent me a message just an hour after we had left the store. We texted back and forth a few times (in my pitiful Japanese and his atrocious English) before finally settling on a day and a time to meet.

I spent the whole afternoon both looking forward to and dreading our upcoming meeting. We were virtually strangers, and I was worried that our lack of each other’s language skills would pose a huge problem to both getting to know each other and getting along. But as it turns out, we could understand  each other perfectly well without really knowing what the other was saying.

He got lost on the way to my house, but I found him a block away. He was in a souped-up station wagon with rims on the wheels, blaring Japanese hip-hop and blasting the heater. He had his hair gelled up for the occasion and was wearing low-slung jeans, a white button-up shirt, and gray suede boots. No coat, even though it was close to freezing out. A big change from the black pants and white Softbank shirt I always see him in. He smelled strongly of some kind of cologne but I couldn't place it.

As we rode toward what I thought was the restaurant we were going to—he had texted me previously something about nabe—we made small talk in a Japanese/English mix. Out of curiosity, because I had him pegged around 26 or 27, I asked him how old he was.

“Twenty-two,” he said. “You?”

Oh.

“Twenty-eight.”

Score One. All my nervousness completely disappeared. Most of my attraction did, too.

“Are you hungry?” I asked in Japanese.

“Yeah, I’m starving!”

“Where are we going now?”

“Do you know how to cook?”

“Yes. . . but . . . not now. Where are we going?”

“Jaimie cooks tonight!” He flashed a huge grin at me, then turned back to steering the car (his brother’s, as it turned out) quickly through the narrow walled streets of Gunma-machi. He pulled into the local Torisen (supermarket) and reverse-parked.

I, wide-eyed in exasperation, heaved a great sigh and pulled myself out of the car. Is this for real? Am I really baby-sitting tonight?

“Nani ga hoshii?” I asked, resigned. (What do you want?)

“Niku niku niku.” (Meat.)

Of course.

He picked up a basket at the entrance and we walked around in a hurry. At the back of the store, he vacillated at the meat section before placing two huge packages of pork in the basket. I, running a recipe through my head, looked up “vegetables” on my iPhone dictionary and showed the word to him. He looked confused for a second, then shrugged as if to say, “Whatever.” I got some green peppers, knowing I had mushrooms, carrots, and onions at home. Before we left the store he exclaimed, “Oh! Sake!” (or maybe “O-sake!” but I doubt he’s that respectful) and promptly plopped a 700mL bottle of Suntory whiskey in the basket.

Luckily, he paid for everything.

Back at my house, after exclaiming, “Ahh, samui!” (“It’s so cold!”) he went out on the balcony to smoke his charcoal flavored cigarettes. I plopped my bags on the counter, rolled my eyes, and asked myself again what the hell I was doing. Cooking for some 22-year old guy who ore’s it up, apparently. (Ore is a super casual, super manly way of referring to oneself. A lot of guys do it, but it seemed doubly arrogant coming from this one.)

While I was busying myself slicing vegetables and stir-frying the vast quantity of meat he had bought, Nao—oh, that’s his name, Nao, which means “furthermore” or “in addition” in Japanese; an adverb for a name—came back in and immediately burrowed himself under the kotatsu. Thanks for asking if you can help, buddy, I thought darkly.

“Drink?” I asked.

“Yes,” and he waited for me to fill his glass.

During the meal, sitting around the kotatsu, he shoveled the rice/meat/vegetable combination in his mouth without saying much, sometimes picking his plate up to eat directly from the rim. I was waiting for the “oishii” stamp of approval, but it took a while for him to remember to complement the dish. He ate two huge helpings though, which might just mean that he was starving. I tried to talk a little during the meal, and when he would attempt something in English that was understandable, he’d joyfully shout, “Okaaaay!” just like my 15-year old san-nen-sei boys do. It was uncanny how similar they sounded.

“Sooo . . . did you go to college?” I asked. He is 22, after all.

“Naaah.”

“You went to the same junior high school I teach at, right?” I started. I had learned this little tidbit back in August when he signed me up for my iPhone. “Were you a good student?”

“Noooo! I slept all during class.”

“Who was your ALT?”

“Paul. From . . . Canada.”

“Do you want to travel?”

“Yeah.”

“Where do you want to go?” I prodded.

“Italia!”

OK, we’re getting somewhere. “What do you want to do there? Look at paintings? Michelangelo?”

“Nanimo shinai, sake dake nomu!” (I don’t want to do anything, just drink.)

Oh. You can do that in Gunma, you know.

“Have you been anywhere?”

“Tokyo, Saitama, Gunma, Tochigi. . . “He started rattling off the names of the nearest prefectures.

“Do you have a passport?”

“Nai.” (Nope.)

Somehow we made it through dinner. I got up to put the plates in the sink and said, “All right, since I cooked, you have to do dishes.”

He gave me a look. “Let’s janken.” (Rock Paper Scissors)

“Saishogu, janken poi!” My scissors beat his paper.

“Two out of three! Two out of three!” he demanded.

“Aikodeshyo!” My rock beat his scissors.

And I did the dishes.

When he finally left, after another hour of strained conversation, I shut the door and said to myself, “Did this really happen?” People say Mexican men are machista, but at least they’re romantic, and at least they try. I’m not going to throw every Japanese guy in the Asshole category, but I’m also not going to be calling up ol’ Nao to take me out again anytime soon. I’d probably end up barefoot and pregnant on a tatami mat before I knew it.