My First Two Dates With Kaori

Date #1...

I got-off the subway and stepped-through the labyrinthine passageways of Michinoshi's central railway station. I heard some statistic somewhere that at least two million people go through this station per day.

Naturally, the crowds were huge. Quivering columns of humanity shuffling back and forth. It was a whirlwind of somehow controlled chaos; it's as if people here instinctively know how much elbow room they're allowed to have in any given crowd. In the central atrium of the vast station stood a quartet of escalators. I was to meet Kaori here.

Goodness, I hope I'll be able to find her. There are just so many people milling-about. And I'm the only white guy in visual range; naturally I'm probably easier to spot.

Indeed, I do stick-out like a sore thumb. Suddenly, the crowd seemed to part as she walked-up. She was wearing a beige jacket with a black turtleneck sweater underneath.

"Hi!" She smiled sweetly. I said hello back, and we started walking. The sky was overcast, and it was drizzling.

We enjoyed an insanely good lunch- okonomiyaki…Literally, it means 'cook what you like'. Essentially, you sit around an iron grill and you order batter with a variety of meat and vegetable fixings. You mix the fixings with the batter and, using a spatula, spread it out into a rather thick pancake. You can fry it to be as crispy as you like, but I've been told that it's best when there's a little soft spot in the middle. She led me through the process, step by step. I had the squid okonomiyaki. Oh, when you cook it, one of the toppings are dried fish-shavings. When you sprinkle them on top of the okonomiyaki, the heat makes them wriggle… so, the okonomiyaki has these little… um… hairs sticking-up on it that seem to dance the twist. The effect is somewhat eerily reminiscent of a mangy, brown sea anemone.

"Okay, do I take it off now?" I asked. It wasn't sputtering and fizzing, so it looked like it was finishing. But those dancing fish-flakes... weird.

"Haaaaaai..." She intoned as she shut-off the gas-valve going to the grill and indicated that I cut it into quarters.

"Itadakimasu..." (I shall partake...) I scooped a semi-wobbly slice onto my plate, and pulled-off a spongy piece with my chopsticks. After blowing-off the steam, I put it into my mouth and smiled grandly.

It was nothing short of superb. Okonomiyaki are truly among the food of the Gods...

We talked about our travels. She'd been to New York City while in college and had lived with a host family. Before coming to America, she'd had an impression that Americans often had breakfast or dinner in their gardens... but her host family's apartment didn't even have a garden, and she was somewhat disappointed by this romanticized ideal picture. I told her that had she visited my parent's house, they would eat dinner in their garden for the sole purpose of impressing her. The only time they eat dinner in their garden is when they have foreign guests staying-over.

She said a number of polite things about the U.S., but at the same time she felt she didn't fully understand the place. I assured her that any negative thing she could ever say about the US would never offend me.

And after lunch (brace yourselves now) Kaori actually offered to split the bill!!

Whoa.

Kawfee-Tawk

Just in case I haven't made this abundantly clear: Japanese women will not do backflips for you just because you're a foreigner. I never came here with that ridiculous idea in mind, and I expected that my date with Kaori will not even get me so much as a casual hug. The main idea is, of course, for us to get to know each other.

After lunch, she offered to take me to visit a large Shinto shrine that was located down the subway line. Unfortunately, the rain began to get heavy and we opted to while-away the afternoon in a nearby coffee shop instead. The communication barrier between us wasn't that vast; her English was fairly good, but we needed the benefit of her electronic dictionary in order to fully flesh-out some of the more difficult vocabulary. She was sitting across the table from me, her jacket off. Her sweater, while not tight per sé, had short sleeves and revealed that she indeed had a slim and fit body. She certainly wasn't anorexic-bony-unhealthy slim like Kate Moss. She was slim the way a physically fit person should look. I really wanted to slip my arm around that waist of hers and feel her head on my shoulder, but it is far too early for that sort of thing...

We sat and enjoyed our coffee and talked about everything under the sun. Well, not everything, but it was light conversation that touched on things like our upbringing, our education, our work, our common experiences. I began to understand that she and I had some significant differences between our personalities... for instance, she said that she didn't take school very seriously when she was younger. In fact, she claimed that I knew the specifics of Japanese history better than she did (but I think she was just being polite by saying that.) We do not discuss politics, however.

Anyway, Kaori works as a wedding singer. Because she can make her voice sound so wonderfully smooth and supple, twice a month she works as an announcer at a horse-track. She's responsible for welcoming the spectators and giving the names of the horses and jockeys as they trot-out onto the field. Naturally, I was asking her a lot of questions about her experiences as a wedding-singer, but we talked a lot about life in our respective countries. Stuff like weather, topography, natural disasters...

"What? You never felt an earthquake!?" She asked in disbelief.

I shrugged. "No, never. I've never been in an earthquake."

"Don't there earthquakes in America?"

"Um... well, California gets them. LA and San Francisco. Seattle and bits of Alaska, too. But I don't live close enough to those places for me to have felt one."

Her mouth crept into a smile. "I feel earthquake. A year ago at my house, the chandelier swing like this." She waved her hands to and fro. As she did so, I admired the soft curve of her arms and her clear, flawless skin. Ooh, I'd love to reach-out and run my hand over her shoulders...

"Do you exercise?" I asked, snapping myself out of the trance I was starting to slip-into.

"I like ride bicycle. Every day, almost. You?"

"Well, I've been thinking of jogging. I feel like I'm lazy by not exercising. You must ride your bike every day? You look like you exercise."

"Every morning I..." She paused and held her finger-up. "Moment." She punched a few buttons on her dictionary and wrinkled her nose at the LCD screen. "Bathroom scale. I use in the morning."

"What?!" I smiled broadly. "No, you don't need to use a scale!" I laughed. "No way! My God, you are in perfect shape!" I shook my head. The whole thought of her ever being concerned about her weight was simply ludicrous. I sipped my latté, bemusedly.

"Nooooo. Noooo." She shook her head and waved her hand. Then, she looked at me and cocked her head quizzically. "Women in America are..." She smiled and cupped her hand over her mouth. "... more heavy?"

Had I been slower in swallowing my drink a quarter-second before, I would've sprayed a mouthful of coffee all over her.

"Ahahahaha!" I threw my head back and laughed heartily for three seconds. It sounded hilarious coming from her mouth. 100% totally unprompted by me! "Phew... oh God, you're funny! Hoo-boy." Man, that was a good laugh. I shook my head and looked down at the table, grinning widely. "Heh... um, not all of them are heavy. But... well, you're very slim, so compared to... Compared to you, they look..." What's Japanese for 'beached whale'? "Um, yes. Yes." I nodded. "Yes, some of them are more heavy than you. A bit." I bit my lower lip and started laughing again; they're just big-boned, is all!

"Why so funny?" She asked.

"No it's... just..." I covered an eye with one hand and looked at her, grinning. "The other day on the subway I was thinking exactly what you said. That they look kind of heavy." I clasped both of my hands in front of me, stifling the urge to chuckle. "But quite a few Americans are health-conscious and aren't heavy. I know that in Japan, being overweight is assumed to be a sign of laziness, but being overweight can also be the result of inherited glandular conditions." I punched the word 'glandular' into her dictionary. She nodded as she read the translation. "But at the same time, yes many Americans have a sedentary lifestyle and consume a lot of sugar, potatoes, chocolate milk... um, deep-fried oxen swimming in giblet gravy, topped with marshmallows and Twinkies (tm). Things like that. One of the leading causes of death in my country is clogged veins. Our Vice-president has got so much arterial plaque tumbling through his circulatory system, he's one plate of scrambled eggs away from keeling-over. But I love the food in Japan, much of it seems very healthy." Yes, only in America can we have a market for something deliciously horrible for you like fried mozzarella, I mused. I began to snicker and leaned-in conspiratorially. "Um... did you know that American women shave their legs?"

"A few Japanese women shave legs sometimes. Maybe is small number who do in Japan. Just sometimes."

"Some Japanese women do... but, most American women do. Like, way more than eighty percent of them need to do it regularly. Or they use hot wax or chemicals to strip the hair-off. Regularly, they do this." I demonstrated with my hand by making a repeated 'ripping' motion across my shin. She looked at me in utter, horrified disbelief.

"Eiiii? Why?"

"Because... because they're hairy. Very hairy." I typed 'hairy' into her dictionary for her to see. She wrinkled her nose at the translation, and immediately started laughing her head off.

Ahh, yes. American chicks are always good for a chuckle or two... At this point, I'd like to direct a BIG 'thank you' to all the chicks back home: thank you for being you! You make it so easy for us to laugh our asses-off over here!

We spent all afternoon together. I expressed interest in hearing her sing, because her voice has got to sound great. But she said that she was too self-conscious to do it without a microphone. Maybe some other time, she said... (which, in Japan, means 'probably never'. Pooh.)

What's more, Kaori and I made a second date for three days after.

Date #2...

As agreed, I met her at Shinakiyama subway station. She was wearing this spectacular one-piece summer dress, and her smile was awe-inspiring. I was a little bit late, so I apologized. I told her that I was going to be getting a new cell-phone in a few days, so I'd never be late meeting her in the future without calling her first.

We planned to visit a nearby Buddhist temple (as she knows I like those kinds of things) and the city zoo.

The temple was about 102 years old, and it was quite beautiful in the way that Japanese Buddhist temples are beautiful. We were standing by the incense cauldron in front of the main pagoda, and I was comparing it with the lay-out of Buddhist temples that I'd visited in Taiwan. Kaori is not religious and mentioned that she is unfamiliar with many aspects of Buddhism.

After visiting the temple, we went to a small Italian-style restaurant. We enjoyed some salad and angel-hair pasta followed-up by tiramisu and coffee.

Michinoshi zoo is about a 20 minute walk; we talk the whole time.

I haven't been to a zoo in years, and there are plenty of kids running-around with their parents. Usually, zoos make me a bit sad... seeing those cramped cages. But these cages seem fairly well-kept. There is a rather good variety of animals in evidence. Rhinos. Hippos. Penguins. Kangaroos. A lion. A tiger. Peccaries. Different species of crane.

After walking-around to see the main exhibits, we spend at least an hour sitting under the shade of a tree, talking about anything and everything. I was drinking a bottle of Coke, she a bottle of tea.

At one point, we were conversing about various bad-luck superstitions in our respective countries. Breaking mirrors, walking under ladders... jamming two chopsticks vertically into a bowl of rice. That sort of stuff.

"If you draw a line down a person's back, it's bad luck." She said, matter-of-factly.

"Draw a line? With a pen?"

"No, a finger." She demonstrated by vertically slicing her finger through the air.

"I see... what'll happen if you do that?"

She shrugged. "Bad luck. But you can rub the line... like this." She rubbed her hand in the air, as if she was erasing something from an invisible blackboard. "And when you rub, it makes the bad luck go away."

"So... you can give someone bad luck with a line, but you can rub the line and make the bad luck go away?"

She nods. "It's something we did in junior high school."

"I see..." With my finger, I drew a line down her back, grinning evilly.

"Eiii?" She opened her mouth in mock shock.

"There, now you have bad luck. Tee hee hee." Just as quickly, I rubbed-off the line. "Sorry... just kidding."

Well... when I touched her, she didn't jerk-away. That's a good sign, isn't it?

She smiled, in fact. "Last time I saw you, time went so fast."

"Yes, time flies when you're having fun."

She looked at me curiously... "Time flies?"

"Er... I'll have to explain what I mean by that..."

To make a long story short, she seemed like she had fun with me. So far, so good. We parted early in the evening and, we made plans for a third date... and a tentative agreement for a fourth: I'll be I inviting her to my place to watch a movie on the secondhand VCR I purchased the other day, and I promised I'd cook for her, too. (Yes, I'm actually going to cook for a woman as it seems she might appreciate it.) I'm going to make stir-fried chicken over wasabi fried rice- the latter, an innovative gustatory delight of my own design. And of course there will be beer or wine, I haven't yet decided which at the time of writing.

Kaori is very sweet, but she and I might not have very much in common. As time goes-on, I might think that we're not compatible and start seeing other women. But she and I both have a busy work-schedule this week, so come back in a week or two and see how it unfolds!

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"Some life forms have ironic sex lives..." -- Pope Meyer III, The Book of the SubGenius

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