Fun with Men

These days, when I find myself with nothing to do, it sometimes occurs to me that I am very lonely. Not lonely as in "I have no friends" lonely, but lonely as in "I have absolutely no interaction with men". I think at my age, that's a fairly normal thing to be frustrated with; even in the U.S. I really didn't meet guys that often. But here, given the additional language and cultural barriers, it seems next to impossible to talk to men. I'd be perfectly happy to date another ALT (wouldn't that be so easy?), but it seems that they all either have girlfriends or are on the hunt for Japanese women.

What with the loneliness, I was starting to be concerned that I would just fall all over any guy that showed me the slightest bit of kindness. I was worried that I might do something stupid. However, a recent experience proved to me that I do still have standards. Last weekend I was at a club called Dahlia with my friend Sasha. We were hanging around at the bar quite a bit because they were playing awful music, so we couldn't really dance. At the bar, we ended up talking for quite a while with a pair of Australian guys. One of them was an ALT, and the other was a friend of his. The ALT (Chase) was trying pretty hard to get his friend (Elliot) laid, and I was apparently the target. Now, given that Elliot was not ugly or weird, you'd think I might've been interested in him. Hey, he was male and not psychotic and he was talking to me. But for one reason or another, I wasn't the least bit attracted to him. If anything, I found him rather annoying. Maybe it was the desperation, but even if they had been a little less obvious about it I think I still wouldn't have liked him. Toward the middle of the evening I ended up flat out telling him that I was not interested, and that he should not expect anything from me. I don't think he would've taken the hint otherwise.

So, while Elliot was something of a nuisance for the better part of Saturday night, I'm rather grateful to him for proving to me that I am not nearly so desperate as I thought. It's really unsettling when you start to wonder if you can trust your own judgment, so this comes as quite a relief. I feel confident again that I wouldn't do something regrettable for a little bit of male attention.

In other news, it is nearly Valentine's Day, and this will be my first experience with the Japanese way of celebrating it. I'm rather looking forward to it. In Japan, couples don't exchange gifts. It's only the girls who give chocolate to the guys. There's another holiday called White Day where the guys give gifts to the girls. I heard from someone that the gift they give on White Day has to be bigger than the gift they were given on Valentine's. Anyhow, all the shops are gearing up for Valentine's Day; in the grocery stores, cake shops and department stores there are huge displays of chocolate for sale. There are the regular chocolate bars that are available all year round, but they also sell fancy boxes of absolutely gorgeous chocolates. They come in all kinds of shapes, colors and flavors. Some have designs that look almost painted on, and others have little swirls of (presumably edible) glitter. A lot of them are incredibly feminine-looking, so it seems odd to me that you would give them to a man. But then again, the women are the ones doing the buying, so maybe that's who they're really aimed at.

Some of the chocolates I've seen so far: Evangelion chocolates (Evangelion is a classic anime), penguin shaped chocolates, square chocolates with cats painted on them, cherry blossom shaped chocolates, a large tortoise shaped chocolate, gorilla chocolate... I can't even think of all the crazy chocolates I've seen.

Anyhow, at school the other day I asked one of my English teachers if I should bring in chocolate for the guys at work. Gift-giving is pretty important here, and I don't know all the rules. K-sensei said that it would be nice to bring in something for the other teachers, and that it would be fine to bring one box to share rather than small things for each person. Which was a relief, since I didn't want to buy a billion little bags of chocolate. So this afternoon I went to Saty (a grocery/department store) to look at chocolates.

For a while now I had also been debating sending chocolates to Takashi. I didn't know if that would be too forward of me given that we have only been on one date. Would it seem weird? Also, it would require asking for his address, and that might creep him out. I was worried about it, but I really did want to give him something. I've been told that Japanese men are intimidated by foreign women because they perceive them as aggressive, but I've also been told that Japanese men expect the women to do most of the chasing. So, would sending a gift be too aggressive, or would it simply show that I am interested?

Ultimately I decided that I should do what I want to do and not worry so much about knowing exactly what is the "correct" way of doing things. So I sent Takashi a message asking if it would be okay if I sent him some Valentine's chocolates. Kind of takes the surprise out of it, but at least that way he has the choice of declining. He said that it would be okay (and even used the particle "yo", which adds emphasis), so I asked for his address, and he gave it to me. Tomorrow I'm going to ask someone to help me write out the address since it's all kanji. After work, if the post office is still open, I'm going to mail it to him. And the chocolates I chose? A chocolate crocodile with some chocolate eggs. It's really random, but I thought it was kind of hilarious, so I went for that one. The chocolates won't arrive by Valentine's Day, but he knows they're coming, so I think it is not a problem. I also wrote a little message on a postcard to go with the chocolates. It's not a Valentine's Day card, but it was rather cute and seemed appropriate enough. Writing even that short message in Japanese was kind of a struggle. I think I probably didn't make a whole lot of sense, but maybe he can figure out what I meant anyway. It's kind of embarrassing to think that it probably reads like it was written by a 3-year-old, but I should hope that he would appreciate the effort.

Anyhow, I'm feeling very happy that I went ahead and decided to send Takashi chocolates. It's such a simple thing, but I feel proud that I'm finally doing what I want to do and setting aside my worries about knowing exactly what is correct. The fact is I may never really understand the rules here, and I can't wait around doing nothing. In some ways Japan has forced me to be bolder than I normally would be.