So during Golden Week I had a date with a girl who I had seen a handful of times before. The plan consisted of bar hopping in Takefu looking for young people, cool places, adventure, and ideally some loving! Until our wonderful night took a premature detour into JustFriendsVille.
On the walk to the bar, Consent, she asked how I got here and was getting home. I told her I planned on either crashing at Freaks or sleeping in my car. She said I could crash at her place. So far so good... so what?
Consent was a really nice place recommened by Fukui's own living and breathing j-encyclopedia, Matty G! The bartenders were friendly, and when I sat down Hitomi commented that it was 5 girls and 1 Rich at the bar. I told her, "I like this place!"
I talked with one of the bartenders for a bit. He said I had the best Japanese of any gaijin whose been there. He said sometimes gaijin dudes go there by themselves and only order beer, but he's never had a conversation with them in Japanese before. It was cool I got to help internationalize by showing peeps that yes, there are gaijin out there who can form simple sentences and hold a simple conversation in Japanese!
I thought things were going well. She was laughing a ton, smiling, and she'd pick up the conversation if I let it drop. I ended up talking about all my friends who have visited, or will visit Japan. She asked about my parents coming to visit and I told her my mom would never come to Japan because she hates long airplane rides.
Now this is where Hitomi took this innocent conversation and steered it straight to hell. She segwayed from me saying "My mom hates long flights" to telling me her best airplane trip ever where she saw a really cute guy sitting alone, sat left her seat and took her baggage with her to sit next to him, talked with him for 8 hours, got his number, he called her a billion times while she was there, she flew back to see him, he came to Japan to see her, etc etc etc. She hijacked an innocent "I can sleep on an airplane, can you?" conversation and crashlanded it in JustFriendsVille. I was way too sober for this, and way too sober for where I knew this was going.
Then she went on to talk about her ex-boyfriends. First was this Mexican dude, then a Spanish dude who she met in Taiwan or Thailand or some other T-country. I think there was an Italian dude in there somewhere, and perhaps an Australian as well. She said they were so romantic and so passionate because they'd tell her things like "You're beautiful" and be really into her, and Japanese men would never tell that to a girl they just met. (Or even a girl they've been dating for years?) Then she told me how she dated some American dude in Japan but that didn't last long cause Americans aren't as romantic as Europeans are. At this point I stuck my finger down my throat to show her what I thought of her blantant racism, but in retrospect this was a bad idea because I needed to be as drunk as possible to get through this and I couldn't risk throwing up any of my precious alcohol. She said she's dating some Japanese dude now, but it's kind of at the end, and it's not that it's bad but it's just not good. blah blah blah. There was only one way I could possibly be comfortable enough to fall asleep at her house tonight: "BARTENDER!"
The night did pick up when a cute, somewhat chubby drunk girl sitting next to me ordered the whole bar a round of champagne! Turns out she grew up here in Fukui but now lives in a lesser, non-Fukui prefecture. She was visiting her folks on Golden Week and decided to go out drinking alone, and bought free champage for everyone to make friends. Free booze = happy Rich.
When it was time to go Hitomi hit up the bathroom and when she was gone the free champagne chubby chick shook my hand and held it for a good 30 seconds more than necessary, then shoved her cheek in my face, making me kiss her before she left. What a shame Hitomi missed this. No matter how bad things went with Hitomi, at least I knew one thing: I loved this bar!
On the walk to the train station I asked her why she didn't invite all her girlfriends out. She said she was thinking about it and I said, "It's ok, I understand - you want me all to yourself!" Then during the taxi ride home she said she didn't have any pjs for me and I said "It's cool, I'll just sleep naked - but no peeking!" Alas, my attemps to flip the script were unsuccessful.
I gave her two big hugs her goodnight and went to sleep. I didn't fall asleep until the sun came up. I didn't think I drunk that much. Although I had gum and brushed my teeth, as I lay there waiting for sleep I could still taste the alcohol on my breath.
I dreamt it was raining, then the rain turned to snow, and the snow was heavy like hail and turned into shurikens. And I was running through the rain of snowy shurikens, either chasing Hitomi, running away from justfriendsville, or both. At some point her American ex-boyfriend made a cameo. Somehow during my restless dreams I convinced myself I still had a chance with her. Just because she mentioned an ex, or two, or all of them, just because she has a boyfriend now, I managed to convince myself I still had a chance... then I woke up.
The morning was quite a bit awkward, waking up in a strange girl's house, having her mom make me breakfast, meeting her siblings and whatnot. Her mom knew I'd be staying and even though we slept in different rooms it was still awkward, like the walk of shame with nothing to be shameful for. It reminded me of the first time I slept over at a girl's house, at Orly Keiner's house. I had never formally met her parents or brothers before, and there I was eating breakfast with them at the table after spending the night in Orly's bed in the most platonic way imageable. I wanted to reassure Orly's parents "I didn't fuck your daughter! I didn't fuck your daughter! Don't hate me!!!"
In the morning Hitomi drove me to my car in quite possible the longest car ride of my life. Her car had one of those awesome map navigation systems, but I didn't need it to tell me exactly where I was: JustFriendsVille.