Dating in a Foreign Land

Dating in a foreign country is not in and of itself all that bad, although if you were to look at the potentials I have been set up with, by and large you might believe otherwise.

I am very lucky to have a friend like Hiro, a friend who cares so much about his wife's happiness, he is willing to go to any lengths to try and make her friends stay in country. He was very excited when Steve and Yuki got married a few years ago, although heartbroken when he discovered they would be leaving Japan, which is how the debacle that is my dating history in Japan has turned out. You see, if the potential mate is fluent in English, as Yuki is, it becomes far too easy for them to leave the country, so Hiro had taken it upon himself to find me non-English speaking boys. I am not fluent in Japanese. I can't even begin to try and fake it.

So one of the first men was a friend of Hiro's (the first problem Hiro has is a lack of friends who are single) who spoke some English, but not too much. Just enough that we could probably swing some basic conversation. However, he had a girlfriend, or two, and some peccadilloes best left unmementioned -- suffice it to say, not qualities you might look for in a mate, let alone a date.

Although, Hiro made sure to reassure me that he was perfectly willing to marry whichever girlfriend happened to get pregnant first, and he would probably give up on the extra-curricular peccadilloes when he got married, or at least by the time the child is born.

Yep, reassuring. Curiously enough, I let him pass.

All the while Hiro is attempting to encourage me to go out with Peccy, as he shall henceforth be known, he is also trying to get me to go out with a man a picked up at a sayonara party. I didn't so much pick him up as have him follow me home (not as stalkerish as it sounds, really). We had kind of hit it off at the party and were cycling home together, all the while I was assuming he would split off when he needed to, but he didn't. He cycled the entire 45 minutes back to Yodoe with me, where a little fooling around was enjoyed (nothing like being woken up the next morning by a phone call from the parents with a man sleeping next to you in bed).

He seemed alright, and Hiro thought so too, however he had a girlfriend. He told me about this a week later because he felt guilty, and then proceeded to tell me about how much he doesn't like his girlfriend. Right. Quality stuff. I later discovered from Hiro that this particular man may or may not marry her because her father gives him ramen. So Ramen boy also bit the dust. Asking for a spine of sorts isn't really too much, is it?

Then Hiro's friend Oyama also decided to play. I was invited to Oyama's wife's birthday party along with Hiro and Diane in order to meet Oyama's first proffering. The blinker who shall be called Bucho. He seemed perfectly alright, although a little nervous, until you tried to talk to him. It was then you would be hypnotized by the rapid-fire blinking he did while he spoke, causing you to lose all focus on the words that may have been coming out of his mouth. It induced me into such trance-like states I would be sitting there staring when he'd stopped, only to realize I had been asked a question and had no idea what it was.

Oyama's second offering was the layabout who apparently spoke very good English (Oyama was unaware of the Hiro requirements in a man, apparently) having done an exchange in the US for a while. But this was a man who was unable to hold a job. He would get a job, work for a little while, and then quit. It seemed his life's ambition didn't extend beyond playing guitar at home while his family took care of him. Hmmm, I didn't think so...

The 2 that followed were found by Hiro at enkais of sorts and led to him phoning me late at night, passing the phone to a random Japanese man so I could say my name and the appropriate aisatsu in Japanese, Hiro taking the phone back, and asking in front of the said man, "well, what do you think?" Right, because a very short awkward phone conversation always leads to the best of first impressions. Curiously enough, these 2 turned out to be the most normal of the lot, and as far as the normal course of action, they stood the normal course and ended up not being particularly interested in me or my stumbling, fumbling Japanese.

Which is what lead to the ceasefire, the permanent halt to future set-ups and a swearing never to answer a late night phone call from Hiro again. His heart is in the right place, but I think he needs a new hobby.