Mendoukusagariya Dates

Dating is an adventure, especially as a foreign woman in semi-rural Japan

[mendoukusagariyadating]

Oops? [Not a Story. Housekeeping Stuff.]

A recent unmatching on tinder has left me wanting to start doing this out of order, but in order to do that effectively I wanted to know what letter I was on. I was planning to write it up and keep it until I got there. 

First, I messed up somewhere around D. I should’ve tried to hammer out chronology first. Maybe I should just be more lax about it. 

Second, there are more than 26 stories I want to tell. I don’t want to use numbers. I don’t want to start doubling letters. AA vs A. BB vs. B. Should I have given them pen names? Should I just use their real names seeing as they’re mostly popular things that could apply to a lot of people?

Maybe brief encounters shouldn’t get letters? Maybe people I didn’t meet IRL shouldn’t get letters? But some of the bigger stories are people I never actually saw irl. My most recent unmatching for instance. He definitely gets a letter.

どうしよう？There’s no time to write anyone new up tonight anyhow, so I’ll just shelf this for tonight. 

[mendoukusagariyadating]

HelloTalk is not a Dating App.

But try telling the people on there that. There’s a search by location feature, and I’ve been approached by a few guys on there.

This guy, who has become G in order of irl meetings, but who I’d been talking to before E and maybe even D found me on HelloTalk. He lived in the same prefecture, actually in the same city as E, not too far from me.

He switched us to LINE and started out saying we’d be friends. He got excited when I mentioned a friend in a different city, asking if they were American. I reminded him that I was also American. He was more interested in making American friends than anything else. He wanted me to introduce him to people. We talked about travel and about hanging out.

After I got back from my work trip, he said he’d show me around his city. We scheduled. My last train home is early so he said I could spend the night at his house if we drank. He asked for my picture. I sent a couple. He said “Wow. Beautiful”

I said I wanted to see his face too. He wasn’t that cute, but he also wasn’t hideous. We continued planning. We’d go to the mall and then if we wanted to drink I’d spend the night at his house.

We planned a bit out and over the next few days talked about things like bowling and darts.

Then the meeting day came. I took the train(s) to his station. He asked me to meet him at a convenience store. I went to the wrong one. He asked where I was and then went to one with the same name but it wasn’t the one I was at. It turned out I went out the opposite exit as he was thinking. I found the place he thought I’d be. We met up. He was quite a bit taller than me. We walked back to his car. He drove us to the mall. His driving didn’t freak me out.

We walked around and went to the food court and sat across from each other talking about our love lives. He’d wanted to date an American girl and that hadn’t worked out well for him even though she was the one that initiated things. I told him about A. I told him I was planning to go to a club that weekend with friends. He asked if I’d try to pick up guys. It was very obviously not a date.

We got back in his car, it was dark, he seemed completely at a loss for other things to do. We talked and ages came up and he admitted he thought I was younger than I am. I pretended I thought he was a year or two older than I knew he actually was. The options were for me to go home or go to his house and drink. We decided to go to his house and drink. We stopped at a convenience store and each bought a drink.

At his house we spread out on his area rug and played that card game where you turn two over and try to match them. I won some rounds, he won some rounds, I think I won more but we didn’t really keep track. The loser had to drink. We played Spit. We played the first game again. We had more fun the more we drank. Eventually the game was too hard for our alcohol addled brains.

He knew that I like dancing (that’s why I was going to go to the club) and so he put music on and tried to convince me to dance for him while he laid on his bed and watched. I was embarrassed but I like to dance when I’ve been drinking, so after coming to the agreement that he’d pretend he wasn’t watching, I would dance. And then I’d catch him watching and he’d pretend he wasn’t. He complimented in a roundabout “it seems as though you’re dancing well but I’m not watching so I don’t know” way. We did that for what felt like a very long time before I sat down against the bed frame. He tried to pull me up to continue dancing, so the touch barrier was broken.

Then we decided maybe we’d just try to go to sleep. He said I could join him in his bed. I laid down next to him. It was a very small mattress. Twin size at the most. We talked a little about past sex partners. We ended up cuddling. And then the cuddling turned into kissing and the kissing turned into lots of touching and more cuddling and eventually clothes started coming off and breathing was heavy and he got condoms out without me having to even ask.

I wondered later if this was the advantage of sleeping with a guy who was still pretty young. A willingness to use condoms. He’s 23. I found out the following day I’m older than his older brothers. We have a 5 year difference.

Anyhow, we proceeded to have really really good sex. I was so starved for physical affection and he just held me for a very long time like I needed, and he teased me like I love, and we spent hours just messing around and laughing and touching and going slowly. With him it wasn’t just about getting his dick wet and cumming. He really made sure I was mentally aroused and physically aroused and was just the best lover I had had in a very long time.

We cuddled so much and I wouldn’t let him go and he was okay with it and maybe even liked it. But somehow we slept without touching. I woke up early and couldn’t sleep. It was very bright and warm in the room. But he was knocked out. We’d ended up separated and I found it impossible to break the touch barrier. After he woke up things were better. It was crazy the difference between how perfectly we got along in bed and how awkward we had been outside of it.

He’d said we could do it again in the morning and after he woke up the touch barrier got broken again and things were okay. We did it again and then we took a bath together-- not just a shower like we had the night before, but an actual bath. We both got in the bathtub and played around splashing cold water on each other and touching and just being super comfortable and nice. It was very intimate. The whole thing was probably one of the more intimate sexual encounters I’ve had, even counting ones that happened inside of relationships.

We scrounged up some breakfast and half watched something while we ate. Then he drove me to the train station.

The Monday after (we’d met on a Friday night) he messaged me “thanks for the other night”

I said that was my line and thanked him for putting up with and answering my selfish requests.

He said it was perfectly fine and asked about the club. I told him how it was that I’d had fun and gotten hit on but hadn’t had any interest in the guy. So I just danced and then stayed up all night in a Karaoke room.

We chatted a bit more and then he told me he was probably going to move to another big city for work. I told him I was jealous and had some friends in that city. He asked if I’d introduce him to them. I said no.

I think in order to understand why I eventually blew up on this guy the way I did, you need to see what kind of conversations we had. Even so you might not understand why. I’ll let you decide.

I asked when he was going --

G: two weeks.

Me: that’s fast, we probably can’t meet again :(

G: Probably not. Do you want to meet?

Me: You don’t want to?

G: Huh? You want to meet?

Me: Even if I say I want to meet it’s impossible isn’t it? If it’s like that, I’m not going to say it.

G: You’re right. If we could meet it’s probably only once before I move.

Me: I don’t think we can even meet once… My mom is coming to visit the day after tomorrow

G: oh? How long will she be here?

Me: until [redacted]

G: A week! How nice!

Me: Yeah, 10 days. Then I have work again the next day.

G: ah, really? I’m off all month

Me: Oh really? That’s nice--- If you’re moving you need time off.

G: yeah, but my moving date isn’t decided yet.

Me: In that case, I want to meet you again.  Is that bad?

G: When?

Me: I wonder when  Maybe it’s impossible after all.

G: Yeah, probably! If we did meet again, what would you want to do?

Me: I wonder what I’d like to do…?

G: something that feels good?

Me: Probably :p

G: then, you want to meet at night?

Me: we can do it any time~ even not at night

G; yeah lol, do you want to do it today?

Me: I want to but I can’t today. I’m at the DMV and will probably be out until night time. It’s far from my house. And I feel like I’m catching a cold, my throat hurts TT.TT

G: Okay Me: TT.TT   TT.TT

G: [hand covering mouth monkey emoji]

Two days later he sends a message:

Going to [Big Other City] has been stopped after all! I’m still in [your prefecture]!

Me: Really? You stopped? That was something you could stop? But we can meet again now can’t we ^^  Are you sad? Did you want to go?

G: You still want to meet? When? But in October and November I’m going to be working in Tokyo! Until then I’m going back to my family home! I’m not sad!

Me: It’s okay either way but… It’ll be difficult if you’ve gone back to your family hours wont it. If I have any luck, I’m going to get a boyfriend before November. If that happens it’ll be impossible... Maybe just a one time thing?

G: What does that mean? Do you want to do it again?

Me: What about you? Do you want to do it? It feels like you don’t want to, so I don’t want you to force yourself. I don’t want to do it with someone who doesn’t want to do it with me, and I don’t want to force us into making the time for it either… These things are good when they’re easy. If we can’t do it easily, it wont make a good memory, right? I want to make it a good memory.

When I remember it I want to think “we had really good compatibility” or “that was so fun!”

If we can do it easily then that’s good, but if it’s too difficult I give up, okay?

What do you think? Is it Easy? Difficult?

He didn’t reply for a day so I sent another message, trying to bow out gracefully:

It’s a pain in the ass (mendoukusai), isn’t it? You can’t even give me an answer about it.

I’m sorry! I killed something that was fun -.-;;

Congratulations on a lot of things! We probably won’t meet again, but if we do will you treat me nicely?

And thanks for everything. Really.

But he wrote back:

It’s not simple? We can meet in [the big city] or somewhere and do it! I’m still in the same prefecture so we can meet again!

This was the first confirmation I got that he might actually be interested in meeting again.

So I replied:

Then let’s meet again, okay?     Sometime ^ ^     Goodnight~

G: I can meet you next month! Are you busy? (this was the last week of the month)

Me: I’m busy, but I’m not sure how busy. We could probably meet

The next day

G: Is that so-- Then let’s meet, okay?

Me: Sure! ^ ^

G: If we meet let’s do [the big city] or your house

Then we flirted and discussed the options-- love hotel, my place, how we both weren’t interested in doing it in a car, he said inside of buildings is the best and then I said I wonder if doing it with someone you’re compatible with is the best. And he asked if we had good compatibility, and I told him yes, it was fun and felt good. And he said that was good.

At the end of the week he messaged me again: Are you free tomorrow or the next day? I had to take my mom to the airport on one of them and I also couldn’t play late on the next one because of work the next day. I asked if he wanted to meet.

He ignored the question and asked about the afternoon on the day before work.

G: Don’t you want to meet and do it?

Me: I have to do some stuff for work. But I want to meet!

G: I see-- Then I guess we probably can’t meet

Me: yeah :(

But the next morning I was really regretting that I couldn’t meet him and sent him a message saying so.

G: Today? I moved so you’re really far away now lol If you want to do it we’ll need to do it somewhere else

Me: I can’t do it, I just want to

G: Oh-- If we go to a hotel in [the big city] we could do it…

Me: I don’t have the time!

G: Understood.

I felt bad for not being able to meet when he tried to coordinate.

Two weeks later I sent him a message:

Me: Yo! Have you already left [the big city]?

G: I’m still here!

Me: Do you still want to meet?

G: I wonder-- Have you come to want to meet again? lol

Me: Yes. Is that a problem?

G: It’s not a problem

Me: are you free next weekend?

G: What day?

Me: Sunday

G: I’m free, but you live really far away

Me: Oh! I forgot to tell you that I have plans to be in [big city]! I’m actually going in on Saturday but [redacted] and I thought we could meet the next day.

G: Is that so-- But I don’t live in [the big city] I live in the same prefecture though

Me: Did I misunderstand? How unfortunate {face palm}

But if you’re far from [big city] why did you want me to go there? Before…Whatever, it’s fine. I guess we won’t meet after all. Maybe I’ll give up?

G: Because it’s closer than where you live! [this is a second message that came in one minute before I sent my long one, so I didn’t see it until afterwards] Do you want to meet?

Me: Isn’t anywhere closer than where I live? Lol If it’s impossible then there’s nothing we can do about it [shrug] I’m sorry for bothering you, okay? I wanted to meet again because it really was good. The time we spent together was fun. It became an amazing memory!

I want to meet but I don’t want to bother you :(

The next afternoon:

G 4pm: Yeah that’s how it is! I can meet, but I don’t have money [lol]

Me 6pm: I understand [crying] I could probably pay for the hotel-- But wherever you’re coming from the ticket or gas would still cost money…

G 8:30pm: I could pay that much!

Me 11pm: Do you want to meet?

At this point I’m pretty fed up with his little game of not admitting to wanting to meet and not allowing any sort of plan to be made. I hate making plans and he is dragging this out terribly. Since I’m going all the way to the city I want to meet someone and make use of the second day. I could’ve been using this time to try to set up a real date with someone who might want to date me but instead I’m here asking this dude the same two questions over and over. I get the feeling that he wants me to beg him to have sex with me, and that’s not really something I’m into. Looking back on the encounter he really seemed to get off on me begging, so I feel like he denies thing just for the sake of frustrating me and making me ask for them multiple times.

The next day:

G: Aren’t you the one who wants to meet? Lol

This just sort of throws me over the edge. I’ve finally had enough of this no you, no you business. And all his hemming and hawing is the way that you behave if you don’t actually want to do something so my pride is starting to hurt. I refuse to beg for sex. I want an enthusiastic partner. I want someone who will agree to meet me easily. If you’re going to make me beg, get me naked and in the same room as you and then play the games.

Me: I don’t want to meet someone who’s thinking they don’t want to meet! If only I want it then it’s fine even if we don’t need to do it. This has become mendoukusai (bothersome/a lot of trouble/a pain in the ass) -.-

Will you just forget it for me? And have a nice life!

G: It’s become mendoukusai-- Then that’s fine!

Me: Yes. Can’t you feel it? In 3 days time we can’t make plans. Even though you’re free. Even though the other person is offering to pay. Isn’t it decided that’s it must be mendoukusai?

If it’s not then what excuse is there?

If you don’t want to just say it! If you don’t say so the other person won’t know. It’s not cute. Hiding your feelings is lame and unattractive. And even though we’re not dating we’re having this unpleasant conversation. It’s mendoukusai.

And that was the end of that.

In rereading this I think I did sort of suddenly blow up at him when he probably thought we were doing a cutesy let’s hide our feelings game thing, but I was so so tired of it. I just wanted to finally make plans with him and he was playing the let’s wait a ton of hours between replies and then not give an actual answer in my reply game, and we both lost.

[mendoukusagariyadating]

Threre’s a third guy, but I don’t consider him a failure.

We didn’t have sex, and we haven’t kissed, but I still talk to him so I can’t write about him yet. 

His will be a very long post. 

I can say that he was in my apartment and no moves were made and no sex was had. But I actually had a different motive for meeting him, so it’s not a failure. It's just an option that didn’t get explored. 

But I guess chronologically he takes the letter F. 

Maybe it’s F for Friend?

Only time will tell. 

[mendoukusagariyadating]

The Second of Three Failures: In which I learn that insisting on condoms is going to make everything more difficult

E has also deleted me from whatever app we met on. I guess this is a thing. I didn’t realize this was a thing. Maybe I’m the only weirdo who hordes their old conversations.

He invited me to meet him after work. We’d pick up some dinner to go and eat it together at his apartment. I’m no dummy. I was still dying to get laid and I was supposed to go on a work trip for 5 days that would make that impossible for that time, and would make coordinating for afterwards also impossible. I couldn’t wait another week. I needed it ASAP.

This guy, like most of the guys I meet tbh, was a few years younger than me. He worked a job that had him wearing suits, and would pick me up from the train station near his house. He’d also drive me home afterwards. We had a little confusion about the exact meeting place, but we were both in the same place and I climbed into his shiny black car and we were off. We didn’t have much time because I had to leave early the next morning for the work trip, so we decided McDonalds would be easiest. I’d never had Japanese McDonalds before or gone through a drive through here. It wasn’t that exciting.

E was very personable and easy to talk to. He wasn’t really my type physically, but his face was cute and his personality was great and we chatted easily as we went back to his place. We watched some strange variety shows that I couldn’t quite follow, ate the food, and other than the fact that he was sitting very close to me on the couch, hardly any advances were made.

He finished eating and then I finished eating and it was getting late. It was past the time we said I’d go home at. We stood up to leave. Despite the fact that I wasn’t dying for his body, I was a little disappointed that I’d leave without getting touched, as I totally came here under the expectation that sex was an underlying motive on both sides.

I stood up to leave and he held out his arms for a hug and then I let him kiss me, kissing him back and escalating things. He asked if I could stay for a few more minutes, and, happy that it seemed I might get what I was hoping for, we moved to his bed. We made out a little before it got to the point when I asked about condoms. I actually might have mentioned them before I got there? I can’t look back and check TT_TT

Anyhow he goes to get one but says he can’t stay hard with a condom on. I insisted that we try. He put it on, and I got him hard again. He wanted me on top. Okay. I got on top and was just trying to guide him inside when he suddenly freaked out and stopped me and ran to the bathroom.

I had no idea what happened, and was worried for a few minutes before he came back, apologizing. Apparently he’d come and was super embarrassed about it. I didn’t mind that he’d come so quickly, but I did mind that instead of being touched, I was now assuring him that it was fine and things were fine and I wasn’t upset. But he didn’t offer to help a girl out either. So here I was, two failed sexual encounters into it and beside myself with need and disappointment.

Since I had an early morning, as soon as he was sure things were okay he was ready to leave. E drove me home and we talked about boy bands and realized we both liked the same Korean boy band, and sang along to the DVD he had in his car (because cars here have DVD players IN THE FRONT DASHBOARD) and, tbh, I was kinda freaked out because he kept looking at the screen when he was driving on the super narrow roads out here.

And then he was asking me about Japanese boy bands and was introducing me to Arashi (I know them but not what they look like) via another DVD, pointing out who is who and asking me which one I think is the best looking, and it was just kinda a strange thing.

We got safely to my house. The next day there were no messages. No thanks for last nights or apologies and hopes to try it again.

A month later, on a Tuesday, he messages me asking if I’m free that Saturday night. I wasn’t.

Two weeks after that on a Friday at midnight, he sent another message: long time no see, do you have a free day?

So I wrote back “long time no see, not really. >.< I’m really looking for a real relationship so, I’ve made lots of plans.”

E:  “Oh, so we probably can’t meet again?”

Me: “yeah, probably”

E: “huh, sad.”

Me: :(

I thought that was it, but the next day, E wrote me again: “I want to see you”

And I said “sorry”

And I think that’s it.

[mendoukusagariyadating]

The First of Three Failures: AKA Condoms aren’t as much of a thing here as I’d like them to be

In keeping with tradition, this is guy D.

Sometimes something happens and all I can think about is sex. It’s not a constant thing, thank goodness, but because I can sometimes go months without any interest in it at all, when it does happen it hits me especially hard, and I find it really hard to ignore. It usually continues and intensifies until I scratch the itch, so to speak.

Now, combine that happening with me being all alone in a new country with nobody I could really call a friend at that point in time, and the memory of how nice it felt to get hugged a few months before. I was desperate for human touch. And, I’m not going to sugarcoat it, for sex.

I got on tinder. I swiped and swiped and swiped and somehow struck up a conversation with a guy who lived nearby. From his photos it was very difficult to tell what he looked like, but it was possible that he was cute. Most importantly he was nearby and he quickly turned the conversation to sex. In my desperation I made some decisions that weren’t the wisest, but my mental health is not always excellent, and sometimes I do these things.

I agreed to meet him, late at night, at my apartment. 1:30am to be exact. I had that written down in a message to a friend that I talk to about this sort of thing.

I’d have liked to meet earlier but D worked in the food service industry so that was impossible. He came to meet me after work, and sent me a tinder message saying he was almost there. I walked out of my apartment into the very very dark and very very quiet, and walked down the street towards the nearby store I said to meet me at. A car pulled on the dark road (street lights aren’t much of a thing here either), and pulled over to the side. I walked towards the headlights until I couldn’t quite take it, and I stopped. It was very quiet and very still.

D got out of the car and walked towards me. He was taller than me (most guys are taller than me, even short ones), and I couldn’t see his face clearly in the dark. I tried, but my eyes just couldn’t see him. It was disconcerting, but it was hella dark. I didn’t want to bring him straight inside because I wanted to feel him out a bit first. He asked if I was nervous. I said yes. He suggested we go for a drive so I got into his car and off we went.

We didn’t go far. Just far enough for me to calm down a little and know that he was really just another person. I tried to catch a good look at his face while he was driving, but for some reason couldn’t succeed. The ambient light wasn’t quite enough, and it seemed like even when I was looking directly at him, I couldn’t remember his features as soon as my eyes were no longer on them. It was a really weird feeling. Like I was forgetting his face right as I looked at it. I blamed it on being tired and it being dark, but looking back I can’t help but wonder if it was something more than that.

I usually write about things in a journal and there’s no entry about him in my journal.

Our entire conversation was on Tinder, and I guess he unmatched me because there is absolutely no trace of him anywhere in my Tinder history?

Anyhow, He parks on the street, follows me into my apartment. There’s nowhere to sit but on the bed so he asks if that’s okay and of course it is. I join him. We leave the hall light on but don’t use the bedroom one because that’s too bright for this type of thing. At this point I still don’t know what his face looks like.

He touches me and I can’t think anymore and we do a little foreplay stuff and then I realize I don’t have any condoms. And he didn’t bring any condoms. I suggest going to the convenience store, but he insists that there’s somehow not enough time. He says he’ll pull out and I vetoed that HARD. There was no way I was letting someone I’d just met go inside me raw. Especially not under the suuuuuper sketchy circumstances of our meeting. I couldn’t even see his face!

I end up helping him finish and then once he’s done he cleans up and he apologizes that it was just him and says that he’ll make it up to me next time and doesn’t offer to help me any. We talked for a little bit about nothing in particular. It was a warm summer night and he was sweating all over my sheets, and he asked about the AC (which I’d honestly forgotten about) and then said that I’m sweating and that it’s interesting because Japanese girls don’t sweat. Which I tell him is a flat out lie because I have seen Japanese women sweat. And he accepts that and then soon after he leaves.

We didn’t kiss on the mouth at all (which was honestly fine by me). And AFAIK he never contacted me again. Maybe not even the cursory “thanks for last night.”

I couldn’t tell you his name even if I wanted to. Hell, he could be standing in front of me and I wouldn’t recognize him. I never figured out what he looked like. I think that bothers me the most about the whole thing -- even though I was still VERY MUCH in the mood to have sex when he left and he didn’t help at all with anything except making it worse.

[mendoukusagariyadating]

TR;DR 101

I was Super Liked by a guy whose profile says, In Japanese and in Portuguese, that he’s looking for friends to speak Portuguese with. 

I’ve never spoken a single word of Portuguese in my life, and my profile is only Japanese and English. 

I didn’t swipe right. 

[mendoukusagariyadating]

Exhibit C - Bonus Story!

Matched with a guy whose profile was entirely in English. We’re the same age. His English seems competent enough. He’s not quite my type, but he looks fun, and like someone I could see myself maybe being friends with, in some version of my life. A couple of his pictures are from angles that make me think that if he actually looks more like them than the other ones, I might even actually be attracted to him.

It starts out fine. C: “Hi. Thank you for swiping me”

Hi! And same :)

C: “You live [in the small city]?”

Yes, are you familiar with the area?

C: “No I’m not. Why do you live there? For working?”

Yes, my job sent me here

C: “What’s your job?”

I explain. Then try to change the subject by asking him where he’s traveled because we are having the conversation that I hate the most (and that I will have at least 20 more times over the next few months)

In the middle of some other messages, is the classic “Please teach me English.”  

I completely ignore that one and respond instead to him asking to change to LINE. I say okay.

He adds me.

He says “Hello this is C from tinder”

I say “Hello!”

4 days later, at 8am he says: “Sorry for my late reply. What will you do today?”

I’ve already left for work at this point and don’t look at my phone until work is over. So I messaged him when I was done, at 5:30: It’s okay-- I went to work! What did you do today?

And I never heard from him again.

But honestly, Good Riddance.

[mendoukusagariyadating]

Today’s story is a little bit shorter: B, The First Guy Who Truly Lived Nearby

I also met B on Tinder. He has since unmatched me, but that’s only inconvenient because it means I can’t look back at our conversation to see who initiated it, and that’s a detail I like to know.

I have a feeling it might have been me. We matched, and then right away I sent a message. I didn’t stop to overthink it. I was feeling chatty and open and very “what the heck it won't hurt to message someone first.” I’m not in that mood very often so I roll with it. Anyhow, his profile said something about music so I opened with a question about music.

Now, here is where it’s important to know that Japanese Tinder and American Tinder are very different in their conversation opening conventions. This carries across applications, but at the time of this story I haven’t refined or expanded my search yet, and I’m new to Japanese Tinder, so I don’t realize the social faux paus I’m making by not starting with the typical 「はじめまして！～と言います。よろしくお願いします。」Loosely translated it’s a set phrase that means something approximating: ”Nice to meet you, Call me ~. Please take care of me.”　It’s how you properly start a Japanese conversation, I think. At the time I did not know this and launched right in, American style, leading with a question-- not introducing myself and being polite and all that.

His response was kind of caustic, rebuking me for jumping right in without saying hello first. I apologized profusely, we managed to hold a conversation for at least a couple of hours, switched to LINE because Tinder is buggy and impersonal, and since he lived very nearby, decided to meet. It was the very next day after we moved the conversation to LINE, on a Saturday. We were chatting about music or something, and then it turned into I’m bored, what are you doing right now, and I managed to push it back a little because I was cleaning my house or doing laundry or both or something, and then since I’d made him wait he wanted to sleep, and then, because Japanese has a tendency to be ambiguous, I was unsure of his meaning and asked if he meant that we should sleep together, so he asked if I wanted to sleep with him, and I was shocked at how quickly things had turned and said, truthfully, that I didn’t know yet. Then he said that since he was tired he was going to sleep. So I clarified that we would meet AFTER, and he said if we’re going to meet it’d have to be then. Now thoroughly embarrassed, I asked him to START with that, and he said he would. Our next message was him waking from his nap and we set a time to meet.

I met him at the nearest train station. He got there before me. A train came in right as I was arriving so I got stuck on the other side of the tracks. Less than 5 minutes later I was sitting inside of his car and we were down the street, driving away into the city part of town via some roads I’d never taken before. We discovered almost immediately that we were very close in age, so it was casual Japanese with him from from the get go. He seemed very cool. Like, hipster kind of cool. Too cool to be bothered, cool. He looked like an artist. He was wearing super baggy clothes in earth tones and a floppy black beretesque hat (hats are unusual here unless they’re a fashion statement, and it was definitely a fashion statement). There was something very languid and lethargic about him, and I found it disconcerting, but not threatening. If we’d been in America I would’ve assumed he was an avid pot smoker. Instead I considered that he might be on some sort of medication, but he’d just woken up from his nap so I blamed it on that.

I don’t think he ever truly woke up the entire time we were together. Not that it was very long. Less than two hours total, I think.

He took me to one of the well known chain cafes in the city we both live in. I hadn’t been to one yet, or really noticed them at all, to be honest. Since then I have noticed that we have at least 3 of them, which is a lot of anything to have in a city this size. I digress.

I watched the way he moved as we walked from his car into the cafe. Something about his body language was off, but I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly it was. Maybe it was his excessively baggy pants? But it seemed to be something more deeply rooted than just trying to walk without letting anything fall down. I looked at his shoes, wondering if they were to blame-- they were hideous. I can’t remember what they looked like, but I remember being very upset at his choice of footwear. (I spent an alarming portion of my first 2 months here being surprised at how ugly some of the shoes are (to my American sensibilities).) Anyhow, I decided it was unlikely that his shoes were causing his unusual gait, and pushed that train of thought aside to focus instead on the fact that he was obviously making fashion statements and I was wearing whatever I’d managed to scrape together out of the approximately 10 items of clothing I owned at that point in time.

We sat in a booth that was just as saggy as I was interpreting him to be. I’m sure the two fed into each other, influencing my memory and making each other seem worse in my minds eye than they were in actuality, but still. He ordered a sandwich thing on a burger bun and a coffee. I got...something to drink. Oh, Cinnamon tea. It was literally a cinnamon stick in a cup of hot water. I was underwhelmed, to say the least. I asked how his sandwich was. He’d practically inhaled it. It looked very fluffy and insubstantial-- a thin layer of scrambled eggs and maybe a slice of romaine lettuce on a smooth white bun that caved in far too easily where his fingers held it. It wasn’t one of the better sandwiches he’d had, but he liked the coffee.

We talked about music and compared artists, and I told him about some bands he should check out based on his preferences. He told me there was a music festival happening not too far away the following weekend, but I had some other plans I couldn’t get out of. I also hadn’t gotten my first paycheck yet, so I didn’t have the money for a ticket. Once we’d settled into the saggy booth, he pulled out and frequently took drags on an electronic cigarette. Or actually, he was smoking very thin conventional, analog cigarettes in some sort of electric device that made them smell even more terrible than normal cigarette smoke. Normal smoke is annoying, and will choke you, yes, but it’s familiar. Somewhat nostalgic in a weird way. This machine gave his cigarettes an acrid smell, as acidic as smoke can be, completely unlike the cigarettes of my childhood. It burned my nostrils. I wondered how he could do it, just the smell was enough to make me sick. I imagined the taste was terrible. I tried my best to time my breathing so that I wouldn’t breathe in for a few moments after he exhaled it.

Cigarettes are a deal-breaker for me. My mom smokes, and my dad died from lung related problems that I’m sure were worse than they needed to be due to all the second-hand smoke he inhaled working in restaurants and bars back before smoking indoors was against the law in America. Doctors swore up and down that he had to have been a smoker, but I lived with him for 15 years. He wasn’t.

Anyhow, enough of this little aside. I think B paid for my drink along with his food, and we were back in his car, headed back to my part of town. We talked more. He was pretty easy to be with. We talked as though we were going to actually become friends, and he was going to introduce me to his other friends. There was a bar he recommended we go to sometime. I drive past it every now and then and think I should check it out, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Part of me doesn’t want to accidentally run into him there… which reminds me I haven’t finished this story yet.

So, B drops me off in front of my building, and I say thanks and we should hang out again and he says the same and I go home. I send him the names of the bands we talked about so he could look them up. He said thanks, and that he’d looked them up. And then radio silence on both sides. For 24 days.

And on the 24th day, he sent me a message: 「えっちしましょう」 ENG: “Let’s have sex”

No punctuation. No hello.

To which I replied (in Japanese) “uhh…” and then  “If someone says that to you suddenly, isn’t it decided that the answer is no?”

B:「たしかに」 ENG: “Yeah, that’s pretty certain”

And that was the last I ever heard from him.

I think that in addition to deleting me from Tinder, he also blocked me on LINE because I did send him a message, 3 months later, saying “it’s been awhile” and he never even read it.

And that is the story of B.

[mendoukusagariyadating]

Let’s start with the first one to make an impression

Ah, naming conventions. Let’s call him A. I’ll decide later if I’m going to go through the alphabet or what. The backstory on all of this is that I moved to my new home in “rural” Japan (an hour from a major city, so far enough to be inconvenient, but not far enough to be in the middle of nowhere) in the beginning of April. I’d never lived truly alone before, so I didn’t know just how lonely 一人暮らし would be, or how it would affect my mental health. I’m still trying to figure out the latter. Anyhow, let’s get back on point. I started Tinder again, something I’d deleted off my phone months before and given up on. But, living in a neighborhood surrounded by rice fields and a pig farm, where the only other people you see for the first two months are elderly people and children, will really do a number on you. I was desperate just to meet someone else in my age range who lived somewhere nearby. How else to check out the local population than to use an app that lets you sort by distance? And so here I am, on Tinder once again, swiping and not knowing what I’m looking for, and thinking it’s just friends, and talking to strangers. And then I see that someone has Super Liked me. My initial reaction to being Super Liked is “EW NO WHY THAT’S SO LAME,” but this is Japan, and things that Americans are too cool for are just par for the course here. I deliberated a bit, decided he was decent seeming enough that maybe he’d be cute in person, and matched with him. He messaged me quickly. We talked, in English, for a little bit before setting up a date for that weekend. I hate small talk and am bad at messaging people I haven’t met, so I prefer to just meet ASAP to assess the situation. We’d meet at the station in the city that I supposedly live in (I’m on the outskirts) and go for lunch. He offered to find a place, and being brand new here and not confident in my Japanese internet skills, I let him. We met on a Saturday, at the aforementioned station. He was a bit late because there was more traffic than he’d anticipated. He doesn’t live that far on a map, but for reasons I’ll never fully grasp, it takes forever to get anywhere here. He’s in another city a few cities away, so it was actually a bit of a commute for him. The first thing he tells me is that I look very young (he said high school age, but I don’t believe that), and when I greeted him he said that I seemed very Japanese in my mannerisms. I followed him to his car. It was a cute little blue hatchback that I liked immediately and it made me like him more, tbh. My first impression of him wasn’t immediate attraction, but I felt safe, and so away we went to the cafe he’d found. We go inside and SURPRISE! They’re renovating! And the kitchen is not open. No biggie, but I can tell it threw him. He apologizes profusely and asks me to look around the store part of the cafe while he finds somewhere else. He asks how I feel about oden, and then we’re off. He feels super embarrassed, but I’m happy and amused. I like a good adventure and nothing makes a better story than things going wrong. The replacement place he found is down some tiny one lane two-way streets, tucked away in the middle of a residential neighborhood. There’s a guy playing with his two young children in the street next to the (tiny) gravel parking lot. The atmosphere is AMAZING. It’s the cutest most interesting looking place I’ve seen since moving here. I couldn’t wait to see the inside. We walk up the path and I’m just excited and drinking it all in and we get onto the porch and they’re still closed. No big deal, they open for dinner and were due to open in about 10 minutes. So we hung around for a bit, he apologized more, I promised him that I liked things better this way.We’d found such a cool place! Still, the place was unusually quiet and eventually he decided to call. So, on any other day they would’ve been open, but some special circumstances made them push back their opening time that day. And we were hungry. So he made me choose -- yakiniku or some fancy looking cafe. I chose yakiniku. But first I wanted to check out the tiny shrine around the corner and while we were there we looked at the other side of the Oden shop. It was made of old miso storehouses. Very cool. We promised we’d come back there the next time.We got back in the car and I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. He called ahead to double check, and everything seemed fine. We chatted on the way, and when we got inside and sat down in the waiting area I realized for the first time that we were very likely on a date. He was sitting very close to me. I was a little taken aback-- I thought we were just trying to be friends. I let myself adjust to the new parameters of the evening. We got a table. We ate lots of meat. And “salad”. We talked in English and Japanese, discussing language on an intellectual level. He was smart. He knew he was smart. It was good conversation and I found myself thinking that he was really easy to get along with and that we could make good friends.  But somewhere in there things changed and he started making lots of really intense eye contact that made me blush and look away. He asked me the classic “what are you thinking?” And I never know how to answer that, so I dodged it. I returned it. I wasn’t expecting him to not dodge it as well. His thoughts were something to the effect of “You have such nice eyes. やっぱり外国人は良いなー.” Which, I’m not going to lie, as far as statements go, that one makes me kind of uncomfortable. (trans: “as I thought, foreign women really are beautiful”) It’s like putting down Japanese women, fetishizing me, and also not actually seeing me all at the same time. But he’d meant it as a compliment I think, so I tried to ignore it. This is also when I realized, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was indeed on my first date in Japan. When we finished eating I went to the bathroom and he paid for dinner while I was in there, and then offered to drive me home. I live 25 minutes from the city part of my city. He didn’t mind. He drove me home. He took some road I hadn’t taken yet (which I now use all the time) which went past a building with neon signs. I asked if it was a strip club, he got super awkward, saying he didn’t feel comfortable talking to me about that sort of thing. I laughed it off. I also live near the ocean, so since he’d driven all the way out we decided to go look at it. There’s no beach, so we just parked on the road next to the wall and went for a walk. It was windy and cold. I was glad I had a jacket. We stood for awhile, talking and looking at the ocean at night. And the moon. Then we got back in his car. He had to pee. He asked if he could use my bathroom. Of course I said yes. He’d just driven me all the way home. There’s no parking so we parked a little ways down the street and as we were walking up he couldn’t take it any more and went to pee in the bushes. Then he asked if he could still come up to wash his hands. At this point I’m wondering how far he’s hoping to take this because I’ve never seen a more obvious ploy to get into someone’s apartment. At some point I’d decided that I was okay with this being a date, but I really had no intention of having sex with him on our first meeting. That’s not how I approach trying to date people. In fact, it’s a pretty good way to make sure I don’t date someone. I was curious though, and not opposed to him in general. So I apologized profusely for the mess-- I think this was the first time I had dirty dishes in my sink (I’d just moved in at the beginning of that month) and let him in to wash his hands. And wash them he did. And then he came out and stood around awkwardly in the 玄関 (doorway) before putting his shoes on and going back out. I was confused, but I also didn’t invite him further in. And he didn’t make any moves. And neither did I. But I walked him back to his car and before he got in he asked if he could give me a hug. I didn’t realize how much I’d NEEDED a hug. And right then, in the hug, I was ready to try dating him. Even if I wasn’t really attracted to him yet, I knew he’d continue to grow on me. At some point on the date we’d exchanged LINE info, and we kept in touch afterwards. He was leaving soon for work training in Tokyo. He’d be gone for a few months. It made me sad, but it wasn’t forever. I could wait. We talked pretty regularly for awhile and he helped me get through the really hard loneliness that gnawed at me my first few months. We slowed down and pretty much stopped for awhile. I met and talked to other people. I’m sure he did too. And then one day he sent me an “I’m on my way back what are you doing?” message. I was at a festival with friends, but it made me super happy. We started talking more again. We tried to set a date to hang out. There was some miscommunication. I tried to make it easier for him by making plans to go to a festival in the city he lived in. Then a Typhoon was coming and I changed things so I’d spend the night at my friend’s house because it’s in a much safer location than where I live. It didn’t hurt that my friend lives in the city he lived in. I was trying to work things so I would meet up with him before I went to my friend’s place, because I didn’t want to leave to go hang out with a guy-- that feels gross. He, on the other hand, was trying to come to the onsen by my house. Obviously a typhoon was coming so it wasn’t safe and I’d made plans to get out of the area. He said he’d meet me. He was doing something, I forget what, I may not have even known what, but he was very slow to check his phone. Oh! I think he was playing tennis? And then he decided to go to the bouldering gym and said he’d meet me afterwards. I told him when I was getting closer, but silence. I got to the station. Silence. He hadn’t even read my message. I waited. I waited. I got tired of waiting and I told my friends I was there. They came to get me and that was that. When he texted me an hour later I told him he was too late, I was with my friends. He asked if I couldn’t leave for a few hours. I felt like I couldn’t. I think that’s where I fucked up. I didn’t make it clear that I’d had a time limit (although I did tell him I was eating dinner with my friends) and he assumed I’d make the time for him when he was free. I tried to reschedule with him for the next day. There were fireworks. That was the original draw to his city. In the morning I asked what he was up to. He was going to Don Quijote. I hinted that I’d never been to one, but he didn’t take the bait. An hour later I asked if he’d meet me that day. Two hours later:“Should I go back to my city?” He answered with a version of:“Sorry I’m still shopping. You’re not going to see the fireworks?”“My friend kicked us out and the other friend had plans so she went home, but I stayed trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t know the fireworks were still happening? I might go to the bathhouse across the street.” Two hours later I sent a second message:“The fireworks aren’t cancelled?” 40 minutes later: “It looks like they’re doing the fireworks” “Hmmmmmm”“What is the bathhouse like?”So I described the bathhouse. And he responded again. And then I realized that he never answered my question about meeting. So I told him that I didn’t think he’d actually answered my question about meeting. And that there were still 3 hours until fireworks and I didn’t have anyone to watch them with so I was going home. And two hours later he asked if I was going. And apologized for being unable to respond earlier because he was “outside.” And then I apologized for the previous day and the miscommunication. I told him I thought we needed an actual time and place set before the day of if we were going to try to meet up. He agreed. After that we didn’t speak for almost two weeks, but we’d previously made plans to go to a different festival that weekend, so I sent him a message asking if we were still on. His reply was confusing, but the gist was that he had two people coming from far away to visit him that day and that I was free to join them in [the big city an hour away] if I wanted. But one of the friends was “[sic]my a girlfriend from Tokyo.” I wanted to go to the festival, and the absolute LAST thing I wanted was to hang out with him and this girlfriend I didn’t even know existed. I hoped maybe it was a language thing, so I stressed the girlfriend part in my reply, which first rejected the offer, pointing out it would be weird for me to be with him and his girlfriend, and then trying to gracefully take my leave. I thanked him for helping me survive my first months here and told him I’d had fun when we hung out, but ended with “Take care and I wish you all the best.” If there’s anything the people in my life don’t like, it’s when I’m trying to distance myself from them because I’ve caught feelings, so of course he apologized about the festival and explained that the other friend was coming from another prefecture and his girlfriend “joined naturally.” And that he’s sorry for it being weird and if I wanted to hang out after the summer he’d be glad to go to festivals with me. To which I replied that he shouldn’t worry about it, I got the wrong idea about what we were trying to do. I told him truthfully that at first I thought we were just trying to be friends and I was fine with that, but then I misunderstood and thought we might be trying to be more than friends, and that I made it weird on my own. And I did want friends, and thought we could’ve been good friends, but it was hard and I had other things that were hard so I was running away and letting him go. To which he replied that he maybe didn’t understand but if I was okay with him, we could “have dinner or do something fun together again next time :) “ So I switched to Japanese. “First of all, you have a girlfriend, don’t you? She came all the way from Tokyo? That’s good! Have fun! I misunderstood.” I re-explained the above message adding in that no matter what I tried we couldn’t meet up, and making plans is super tiring for me, and I hate unrequited love so I didn’t want to see him for awhile. I’m running away. And then he said he understood. He thought it was a good idea to give me some time and then we could go for food or to play. [This really felt like a bad joke at this point] To which I replied (in Japanese) “Isn’t this enough? I got hurt, I’m embarrassed, there isn’t really a reason that we need to meet again is there?  I really am grateful but our relationship was always very easy to misunderstand. I’m tired. I want to give up. And then, finally, I never heard from him again.

[mendoukusagariyadating]

“The best way to improve your Japanese is to get a Japanese boyfriend.”

Countless people during my time here studying abroad

[mendoukusagariyadating]

But where do I even start?