First comes black coffee

So when I first arrived in Japan about 10 months ago I told all my American friends here the same thing: "I will never date a Japanese guy."

They all rolled their eyes and told me I shouldn't make such pronouncements. I speak Japanese, I am interested in the culture, there is a huge shortage of American boys here: I will definitely end up dating a Japanese guy.

I would protest about their fashion sense (a fair amount of them wear tighter pants than me, love the color pink, use more gel in one day than I have used in a lifetime, and carry purses), my less than satisfactory Japanese skill, and that I could never be with a guy who put his work so far ahead of me (I could deal with equal, but more important than me? no thanks. I could never be a Japanese housewife). ｬダヽ(ｏ`皿′ｏ)ﾉ

Well, it's 10 months later...and I have been on 2 dates with a Japanese guy.

After I got back from Thailand, I got a text from Atsushi. He asked about my trip and suggested that we get together during the week sometime. Today was the only day we both had open so we met up for dinner.

He wasn't sure when he would get off work so he said he would contact me when he got off or send me a message if he would have to cancel (people in Japan tend to stay at work fairly late because no one wants to be the first one to go home...it looks like you're lazy). (･_･?)

So he knew vaguely from previous conversations the general area where I live. He called to let me know he was off work and would be heading that way soon. When he got to the main landmark he knew he called again and I walked out to meet him. I had been hanging out with Laurel to keep myself from going crazy with nervousness.

He waited for me in front of the landlord's office at the end of my street and I walked out to meet him, rather than try to explain where my apartment is, which would have been unnecessarily difficult.

This was only the 3rd time I have seen him in person, as we have been communicating quite regularly through text messages, and the last time I saw him he was in his work clothes...which are never that attractive (they have a horrible blue uniform made of recycled PET bottles). So it was nice to be assured that he has style, but not too Japanese style. He is a well dressed guy. He tends to stick to dark colors (no pink so far). While he does carry what I would call a "murse" it is a masculine one and therefore forgivable. It slings across his back and not over his shoulder or attached to his hip.

We didn't have a set place to go this time so we just walked in the direction of the train station, since there are usually some restaurants there. We mostly made small talk until we came to the nice Italian place lAmour (don't read too much into that name, though it actually is a kind of romantic place.....)

Thankfully I had been there before but again the menu is always my biggest challenge so I stuck with the same thing I had ordered last time...

He actually ordered for me (after I told him what I wanted). I am not sure if he was trying to be chivalrous or what, but I didn't mind. When we got to the drink menu, he was talking about how the names of some of the drinks were odd, and pointed out pina colada. I was pretty surprised he didn't know what it was...so I ordered it to give him something to try, though it was not quite the same as a real pina colada. He ordered a shirley temple (which apparently has alcohol in it here) and I had to try EXTREMELY hard (and successfully) not to laugh. Things are different here. Boys can order drinks like that and not be looked at strangely.

Anyway, they brought out a bunch of different courses, because the sneaky boy had ordered the set menu instead of just the plain pasta, and we talked while we ate.

At this point I realized more about my difficulty with holding eye contact...especially in Japan. I probably looked really awkward staring at my plate all evening (that's a bit of an exaggeration). We both had our dictionaries again (though I had almost forgotten mine) but we used his mostly. We just left it out on the table and used it whenever we hit a snag in conversation.

We speak almost entirely in Japanese but I'll toss in some English every once and a while. He talked about how he reads in English but when he tries to speak the words won't come out. So I suggested a few methods I use to get better at Japanese. Apparently he is translating a book from Japanese into English (which is brutal...translating into your non-native language is REALLY hard).

We ordered another drink and stayed at the restaurant until it closed. We had been there nearly 4 hours but it went by really quickly. I really felt like I was starting to get to know him a little more now that we have gotten past most of the small talk.

I mean there were still quite a few silent patches in the evening as we searched for things to talk about. There is a bit of a language barrier, though I am working on that (^_^)

He walked me down the street to the corner where he met me and we said goodnight, saying we'd see each other on Saturday for my BBQ. o(^^o)(o^^)o わくわく

｢(ﾟﾍﾟ)　エットォ…