Date Night

Last night I had my second date with Fuuta. We hadn't really set up any specifics as to what we would do, so when he arrived I was still wracking my brain for ideas. The first order of business was dinner. I had an Italian place in mind, but by the time we got there they had stopped taking orders for the evening. So we wandered on and eventually ended up at an Indian restaurant I like quite a bit. I don't know that Fuuta had ever had Indian food before, but he was game for it, so that's where we ate. It was a nice meal.

After dinner, we went to Hirome to get a few drinks. It was really crowded inside so we went to a little bar attached to the back of Hirome. The bar, called Sanctuary, is literally a counter and seven or eight stools. That's the whole thing. There's only ever one bartender at a time, for obvious reasons. That night it was Adam, an American ex-JET who lives in Kochi permanently now. It was kind of funny that both Fuuta and I could talk to him, but not at the same time; Fuuta couldn't understand enough English, and I couldn't understand enough Japanese. So we had sort of an awkward situation where there was always one person excluded from the conversation. Maybe because of this we only stayed long enough to have two drinks.

While we had been sitting at Sanctuary, some songs had come on that made Fuuta feel like singing. Me too, really. So we decided to go do karaoke. I don't think I've ever done one-on-one karaoke before, and I thought it might be a little awkward, but it turned out fine. We actually managed to sing for two hours. Fuuta has a nice voice, very clear and strong. He sang a fair number of songs in English, particularly songs by Bon Jovi. As is Japanese custom, he praised me excessively for my singing.

It was about midnight when we finished singing, and while I would normally stay out somewhat later than that, Fuuta was really tired. He had worked an insane shift from Friday evening until Saturday mid-morning, and it really seemed like he was running on fumes. So we decided to call it a night. Since Fuuta lives like three hours away from the city, I had offered him a place to stay for the night. Although it was kind of chilly and I wouldn't have minded taking a cab, we walked back home. We stayed up a while later talking and I showed him a little photo album that I brought with me from America. He was surprisingly interested. He was really surprised by the picture of Erin and I standing by the limousine that our families rented for Prom night, and also by the pictures of camping at the Bruneau Sand Dunes. Japan doesn't have deserts like that, so the scenery was very different from anything he has seen before. One thing that cracked me up was his reaction to a picture of Brett's 22nd birthday. At that time, Brett had a red streak in his hair. Fuuta described him as "funky", actually using the English word. I couldn't help laughing.

Anyhow, we slept in pretty late, and Fuuta left a bit before 10:30 this morning. All in all, I enjoyed the evening, though there were a lot of awkward moments. My shyness combined with my limited language ability result in me being excessively quiet at times. It's hard enough to think of things to talk about, but when you're also limited to the things you can say in Japanese, it becomes extremely challenging to keep the conversation going. There were a lot of times when we'd look at each other and just burst out laughing. It was kind of surreal. If I were in the U.S., I would probably have considered it a terrible date. We could hardly communicate; Fuuta had to repeat nearly everything he said, and he often had to paraphrase as well. And even then I still didn't get large chunks of the conversation. But my standards have changed a fair amount in the past year. Because Fuuta seems sweet, was friendly and patient, and treated me with respect, I thought it was an awesome date. Never mind the fact that we could barely talk; I just enjoyed spending some time with him. I'm hoping he felt the same.

That's about all I've got to report for the time being. Fuuta has sent me a few messages since then thanking me for the evening, and saying that he'd like to see me again. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, though. The things guys here say don't always mean what I think they do. It's possible that some of the things Fuuta says are basically just required politeness forms. But I'll be happy if we do meet again.