In the midst of a party at a local izakaya for the new JETs in Iwate, I got a message from A, and I couldn’t stop smiling as soon as I saw the kanji characters representing his name on my little cell phone screen. We had already agreed to hang out during the weekend, so his message, “Are you free tomorrow? let’s go out to lunch!” left me pleasantly surprised. I’m still so unsure sometimes, that he even likes me, because he doesn’t give the cues I’m used to seeing from boys who like me (and I’m not sure I’m giving enough of the ones that say I like him, because I’m scared, and nervous, and…), but other times I realize he’s been giving the cues; they were just too subtle for me to pick up at the time.

(and he’s Japanese, so it’s not like I can, god forbid!, ask him outright!)

(or maybe that’s just an amanda problem)

“I’m free, lunch sounds fun~” I texted back, attaching stars and smiley faces to be cute. I’ve gotten to the point where a naked sentence (ie, a normal sentence with proper punctuation and everything!) feels odd to me - I’ve gotta paste a star or a doodad or some other emoticon my phone has in its memory. I’m just following what everyone else does (and some girls do it worse than me, even if they are cute in their sparkly excess), but sometimes I miss the days when it was normal to just write a simple text, you know, one that says what you mean without having to dress it up or hide it with silly cell phone hooha.

(uh then again, when what you “mean” is to meet at 7:30 for a movie, you don’t really need to stress “honesty in text messaging” now do you?? i mean, that’s what i used my phone for in 2005, i dunno know about all yall)

“Let’s meet at 12 in the lobby” I responded again, attaching a few hearts. Even if I’m not brave enough to say “I like you” out loud, maybe I can convey it through hearts. Folks, I think I’ve touched on the Japanese ideal. I think this is it. I imagine myself a bold, frank person (after all, I let you fine people know everything from my breakup stories to when I’m taking a dump), yet in real life I still manage to be the same girl from high school who couldn’t be brave enough to confess to the boy she liked. I felt like I shouldn’t have to say it. If it’s meant to be, words aren’t needed. I don’t know if that’s a good way to feel or not, but in Japan I feel like everyone is on the same page regarding (a lack of) talking about our feelings.

“Okay, great - I’m thinking of the place by Sakurayama Shrine,” he replied, with a little twister at the end of the sentence. A twister(??). Ok, guys. I can only participate in this little wordless game called Japanese society if I know the meaning behind these little symbols and cues that they use instead of words! But somehow, I thought as I sipped my drink and chatted with the new JETs, it was okay. It’s this mystery that keeps everything fun.

The next day as I was waiting for A in the lobby, the crush of my longtime crush, sometimes coworker (hereby referred to as Crush’s Crush, or CC) waved hello and came up to talk to me. “Hiya,” she said. “Are you going to lunch with A?”

The hair on the back of my neck bristled and I hoped no one else was around to hear this. “Um, yes. How do you…?”

“Oh, I got it? I guessed?? Hey, how bout that,” she smiled, and then she peered at me closely. “Are you guys dating??”

“No,” I answered immediately. “No, no no. We’re just friends.”Ugh, why are you asking me this, I want to run away, ugh ugh ugh, how bout I ask you if you’re going out with T-san, huh?!?

 ”Hmmm, you guys are just really close,” she smiled, satisfied. Thankfully A called me so I bowed out of that conversation (literally). Unfortunately CC is the one girl I don’t want to tell everything about my romantic history to, and it’s not really her fault, you know? I shouldn’t even be focused on my crush any longer, and in a way, I’m not, but it doesn’t mean I have to like or be friends with the girl that he likes. I can’t be friends with everyone, I say to myself, even though I know the reason is pure jealousy. Besides, she knows that gang, and if she knows I’ll betcha everyone else will too, and the number one rule of dating in Japan is Don’t tell anyone you’re dating.

(that and, me and A not even dating! it’s not like I was lying)

A told me to meet him by the stone torii gate outside the office, and I saw him run across the street, his white shirt making him stand out sharply from the drizzle and green. The trees around the office are all in deep bloom, and the amount of green everywhere is staggering. I love it, it’s gorgeous. Summer in Japan just seems so green, and it makes me happy even when it’s raining. He jogged to me and smiled wordlessly, and we walked together, two umbrellas side by side.

“So this weekend, we’re going to Hiraizumi,” he said at lunch. “That’s going to be fun; there’s a lot to do there.” I nodded, chewing my cheese and eggplant stir-fry, knowing what he was about to say next. His hometown was right near Hiraizumi to the south, and he had mentioned it the other day as we texted each other. His hometown. Did he want to show me where he grew up? Did he want to show me all the cool spots that a normal tourist wouldn’t know about? Did he want to bring me to visit Mom and Dad? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that! (especially since we’re only kinda sorta dating, maybe)

He sat back, looking like he was about to say something, and I remained silent, looking expectantly at him. It’s not like it was a huge deal; I’ve met a lot of boyfriends’ parents without there being talk of marriage or something else ridiculous. Then again, did he even tell them about me yet? You know, the fact that I’m not Japanese? It shouldn’t be a big deal, but you know it is, and will be, probably forever. I just imagined his parents, in the middle of Nowhere, Iwate, seeing us pullup to their house and seeing whitey get out of the car, and them dying of shock. I’ve never met an older Japanese person react to me that way, but then again, I’ve never met an older Japanese person while dating their son.

“And,” he started off tentatively, “Hiraizumi is close to my hometown.”

I smiled and burst out excitedly,”Yeah, that’s right! Are we um…Are we really going to your house?”

“No, no, no,” he said immediately, and I couldn’t tell if he really felt that way or it was just a way to take back his kinda-sorta suggestion when it seemed like I kinda-sorta wasn’t ready for that yet. Everyone tells me that I overanalyze these things, and I admit that yeah, I do. I definitely do. Maybe I just excuse the fact that I have a hard time communicating by saying that I’m “sensitive” and can figure out things wordlessly. I dunno. But I got a feeling in my gut about what he wanted, and felt bad when I realized I had shut it down immediately, even when I had only said it to further the conversation. I’m good at this “talking around subjects” thing but not that good. I offered him half of my cheese-yaki as consolation.

Two days later, we were in his car driving to Hiraizumi. Hiraizumi is home to a couple huge temple complexes and is pretty much the birth place of Iwate civilization - and the starting point for a surprising amoung of Japanese customs. Iwate is actually pretty important to Japanese history (well, all the prefectures say that…), and A told me that if the lord of Hiraizumi had been able to defend the area from the Kamakura Shogunate perhaps Iwate would be the center of Japan, not Tokyo. Hiraizumi’s a place I’ve been wanting to go to ever since I’ve gotten to Iwate, but it’s always been too cold and I could never get people to go with me - people don’t tend to visit tourist attractions in their own backyard. I was 19 before I finally visited New York - I know the feeling.

I could see why Chusonji temple, the main temple of Hiraizumi, was gunning for World Heritage status. It deserves it - inside is a huge temple gilded with gold and lacquer, inlaid with mother-of-pearl - and if Marco Polo had ever made it to the mythical Ji-pang, he would have found the Land of Gold that he sought. And being a temple complex, surround with bamboo forests and chirping cicadas, I realized how much Kyoto was in Hiraizumi, and I was taken back to another time in my life that seems so far away now, a time when I was younger and stupider, but when everything seemed so new. I realized, as I held A’s hand and we didn’t care who saw us, that I didn’t miss it.

“Where do you want to go next?” he said over negi-miso ramen at lunch. I slurped on the slightly spicy, garlicky concoction before answering.

“I really wanna go to Geibikei Gorge,” I smiled. Geibikei is a place I always hear about but I’ve, again, not had a chance to go since it was too cold. I’m getting the impression that Iwate only really has about a 3-4 month window of good weather, so I gotta take advantage of it while I can. “Is it far?”

“Nah, it’s not too far. Let’s do it,” he smiled back, and then he was silent for a minute. “I’m thinking the best thing would be to take a loop through the surrounding countryside and then meander towards Geibikei.”

“Okay,” I said, understanding that the surrounding countryside meant his hometown.

He sped through the small, twisty roads with the skill of someone who had driven these roads many times before. He would point out passing landmarks, and boasted that he knew exactly where the police cars would be stationed, so there was never a danger of getting a ticket. We rounded a bend and suddenly were smack dab in the middle of his hometown main street. There were stores on either side of us, but most were boarded up or closed. “There’s no one around,” he clicked his tongue. “Three elementary schools have had to merge into one because there’s no kids around here anymore.” I nodded, thinking of how hard it is to see a place you grow up in wither up and die. It’s happening more and more in Japan, and nobody’s sure how to stop it.

He showed me his own elementary school, which still had enough students to prevent any mergers. “I used to walk down this road everyday!” he said excitedly, and his nostalgia rubbed off on me. I wonder what it’s like to grow up surrounded by rice fields and overgrown shrines. When you’re a kid and crave stimulation it would probably drive you nuts, but as an adult I wonder more and more about how a quiet upbringing would have changed me. If I had grown up on a farm in the states, would I even be here now?

We rounded a corner and he pointed across some waterlogged rice fields. “You see those houses over there? Well, that one house with the white exterior and the black roof - that’s my house!”

I pressed against the door, craning my neck to see. “It looks so nice!” I said. And he went silent, and I went silent, and time slowed down. I tapped my fingers on the windowsill. I wouldn’t mind stopping, I guess…

“I wonder if anyone’s around,” he chuckled softly, but he kept driving and pretty soon we had passed the gravel road that would have led us to his house. I didn’t say anything, but I kept staring at the house until it was obscured by passing trees. I don’t know if he had really wanted to stop, or if it was just a random thought in his head that he didn’t think too much about, but I smiled gratefully at him. I just…wasn’t ready. And I think he knew, even though I didn’t say anything.

“Someday, I want to show you where I’m from, my hometown and stuff,” I said.

He laughed, seeming relieved. “That’ll be quite a trip!”

The rest of our day had a light air about it, compared to the briefly anxious morning where I had worried about whether I’d be presentable enough to his parents. We got to Geibikei and boarded the boats bound for the head of the river, surrounded on both sides by huge, imposing rock faces. It was gorgeous. Vines creeped down the side of the grey cliffs, and ducks swam gracefully next to boat. “That’s tonight’s dinner,” the boatman joked (?). I sat close to A and watched the scenery, while everyone else in the boat snuck brief glances at the foreign girl-japanese boy couple.

At the head of the river we got out of the boat onto a small, gravelly beach. There was a huge cliff side with a small hole in it, with small rocks collected on the inside. “If you throw a rock in, you get good luck,” A told me. I picked up a small rock from the beach and threw it with all my might, but it didn’t even reach the rock face, landing with a disappointing plop back into the river. I laughed and egged him to try, even though from the look on his face, I could tell he doubted he could make it in. There were other men around us trying to throw stones into the hole and not one had made it.

A picked up a smooth stone and hurtled it across the river, and by dumb luck, it made it into the small hole.

“You did it!” I yelped, grabbing his hand and twirling around. I felt a bit of pride about the fact that the guy I was with being able to do what no one else could, and I interlocked my arm with him as we walked back, holding him close. I felt strange, and happy. I was glad to be there with him. I wasn’t ready for some things yet, but maybe I would be. I felt a safeness that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I thought, for a fleeting, scary second, “Yeah, this guy is kinda my boyf-” but he stumbled on a rock and I lost my train of thought.

He looked at me apologetically. “Aw, man. I think I just lost all the luck I won.” I laughed and hugged his arm closer to me, because I felt pretty lucky anyway.  For once, I just wanted to focus on the here and now, and leave the worrying about the future, and the past, and present, and everything behind. I have some complicated baggage from a long relationship I had when I was still very immature, and I’m afraid of making the same mistakes. I have a person that I care very much for even if I’m pretty sure I’ll never be a part of his life the way I want to be, and I’m not sure I’m ready to take my focus off of him completely. I don’t know if I can stay in Iwate forever, and eventually any relationship I start here might have to be a long-distance one (even if it was only the matter of the distance between Iwate and Tokyo), and we all know I am terrible at long-distance relationships. There’s a lot to worry about in starting a real relationship with A. But in a way, it’s just me thinking too much. What’s the point of worrying about these things if you have no way of knowing what is going to happen?

It’s just that the last time I let a relationship drift to its natural conclusion it ended horribly. I couldn’t talk about my real feelings, because I just kept thinking, “well, we’ll talk about it when it happens.” “We’ll get to that stage when we get to it.” When we got to the stage of me being attracted to other people, or deciding to return to Japan, I didn’t know how to talk about it, and I wished I had just said things like, “There’s nobody now, but I think eventually I would like to date other people while in Japan,” or, “Eventually you and I will not be living in the same places, and I don’t think we will get married, so it would probably be more fair for us to break up.” But I was too afraid to say these things, thinking it would all work out in the end. It didn’t. So I don’t want to repeat these mistakes.

Now, though, wasn’t the time, I realized as I leaned against the edge of the old wooden boat, soft tatami padding my dusty feet. There was still some time for some wordless communication between us, and I wanted to see how far we could get before one of us was brave enough to say things aloud. I wanted to see what kind of base we had with each other, how in sync we were, before possibly taking the mystery away with words. It may be messed up in a way, it may be me being a coward, but right now…it feels just right.  

The old man steering the boat started singing an old Japanese song, the notes bursting out from the back of his throat, and we sailed into the setting sun. A trailed his fingers in the water, his tan golden in the sunlight. And above us was a falcon, alone in the deep blue sky.

“Yeah, I’m going to make you nikujaga stew. Classic Japanese cooking.”

“Yay! Oh man. I’m really excited about this! Japanese style is your specialty, after all. You’ve got a traditional heart.”

“Well, nikujaga is easy. But um…what kind of spices/flavorings do you have around the house? So I know what to buy.”

“Um…I have nutmeg-”

“I’m talking about making Japanese food and the first thing you think of is nutmeg?”

Maybe being out of sync wouldn’t be so horrible either.