Relieved

My dinner date bailed just an hour before we were supposed to meet but I’m so relieved. I’m getting that jet-lagged feeling again this week where there is so much strangeness and I’m having difficulty sleeping, so I’m glad for a relaxing evening. This is going to sound horrible but I met two Japanese women as potential language exchange partners and it was…hard. My enthusiasm for this language exchange thing has dimmed somewhat.

I’m not sure what I was looking for. I know for sure I want to seriously practice my conversational skills but I need someone with limitless reserves of patience. But maybe that’s not realistic. Who wants to spend an hour with a stuttering foreigner?

The first girl I met just wanted to be friends. Having spent a year in Canada, her English is far superior than my Japanese so we ended upspeaking a lot in English. She just broke up with her Aussie boyfriend two weeks ago and needed the company. Also she is a fresh grad from Nagoya who is looking for a job in Tokyo. Our meeting didn’t get off on the right note as we paid 1,000 yen to reserve a seat in an izakaya from one of those dudes who hang around the streets to promote their restaurants. We spent an hour searching Shinjuku for this izakaya. We were going to give up but this sales guy at an Au Kiddi booth gave us very clear directions.

We chatted about ourselves but I think we were both so hungry we just ate in silence for the first 10 minutes. It broke my heart when she asked me to stay out a little longer because she didn’t want to be alone. I felt a bit weird when she kept linking arms and skipped along next to me as we walked around Shinjuku. I think she was just looking for company. She spoke Japanese really fast and taught me casual words that I forgot as soon as I repeated them after her. I have to really work very very hard at my Japanese. Maybe I should study before meeting her again.

The second girl I met seemed more mature as she had already been working for one year. Her English was not as good as girl number one but her personality was so bubbly I felt a woosh of relief. The one thing I worried about was not having anything to say. We yabbered about our own countries, life in Tokyo and anecdotes about our friends and experiences. We compared notes on having gaijin boyfriends, too.

This led her to relate a story about her friend from university who has been in LA for seven years trying to make it in show business. She married an African American man with whom she had a baby. They are now separated but she cannot divorce this man because she needs her green card status, as she got it through marrying this dude. Girl #2 said: “She is so STUPID! She’s a STUPID STUPID STUPID girl! She is coming back to Nagasaki after seven years.” I was more surprised by her sudden change in tone than her choice of words.

I enjoyed myself don’t get me wrong, but I realised the language and cultural gap is much wider than I thought. Goodness, I already thought it’s hard enough making friends with someone from home, let alone from another country. Sigh.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch and you should always sing for your supper. I certainly believe that. I better get my ass down to studying. Bleah.

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