O-san has been coming by every day to my division, with his familiar staccato “haro” and his meandering conversations. I think he hasn’t had much work to do ever since he got promoted, but it’s fine with me because I get about 10 minutes of trying to figure out what he’s trying to say before he leaves abruptly without saying goodbye. It’s interesting, at least. “O-papa” takes my mind off the stillness of my work for a little while, as he makes friends with X and glances, from time to time, at the poor oblivious boy beside me. It’s nice, but I’ve found myself missing his other half, C-san. I haven’t seen her since Golden Week, when I hung out with the two of them for the day (after meeting their son and calling him “Big Brother”) and she bought me my own cup and bowl and chopsticks for when I have dinner at their house. “I miss her,” I said to him. “I’m going to message her today and see if she wouldn’t mind me coming over for dinner tomorrow.”

Later that night she messaged me back. “I’m sorry. Tomorrow I have guests coming over and next week I’m quite busy. Just wait til everything calms down and we can spend some time together…” I was a tiny bit disappointed, but she has been really busy lately - she’s vice chairman of an art committee, they’re putting on a show in a few months, and she’s had some personal problems to deal with. I couldn’t blame her for being too busy to entertain the local foreign girl.

(well, yes, I guess I am at the point where I am getting rejected by my AARP friends too, heheh!)

 The next day, O-san shuffled by apologetically. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought maybe she’d be free so I said it would probably be okay without asking her. Some time soon, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I smiled. To tell the truth, I was feeling a bit tired anyway, so perhaps it was best if I just went home today.

Later at lunch, I told X all about the various goings on over the past weekend while we sat outside under the Japanese cypress trees. I had spent Friday night hanging with some Japanese girls, and I had actually felt included and happy and like…I might have found some J-girls that I can relate to! I mean, we did spend the whole night talking about boiz. And then I played video games on Saturday with T-san and S-kun, just like I would have with my fellow nerds at home. “After all,” I drawled slightly, “A went home to his parent’s house again this weekend, so even if I wanted to hang out with him and kept my whole weekend free, I couldn’t anyway.” She giggled at my naked sarcasm. Still not so good at playing the mind games after all, I guess.

Well, it pleased me regardless that I could finally counter my dad’s “Hey, Amanda, I look at your pictures on Facebook, and I only see … old people??” with, “Oh ACTUALLY I have made some friends my own age lately, thanx.” I finally am comfortable asking to hang out with T-san and the rest of the douki, because goddammit, I know I’m just a girl but we all have so much in common (our nerd underclass status) plus the fact that yes, I can beat you all at Mario Kart. And I think I’ve finally found Japanese girlfriends that I can really talk to, and not feel weird or intimidated or feel like I am weirding them out or intimidating them (they did listen to my boy troubles and told me I was doin’ it wrong, though). It’s nice to talk to older people and get their take on things, to get advice and to listen to great stories, but it’s nice sometimes just talking to people who are going through the same stuff as you, who have gone through the same stuff as you, and probably will continue on the same life path as you - as close as a foreigner and a native can get, I guess. Heck, my friend H-chan and I chatted about how rude people are to fast food workers (which we both have suffered as) - apparently we both were super polite to customers while cursing them out behind their backs. And yes, Japanese customers get just as snappy as American at us poor, subhuman fast food workers.

Anyway, yes! Finally, some age-appropriate friends.

Unfortunately, the rest of the afternoon left me a bit stressed about work, and wanting to vent but not having anyone to vent to. I was frustrated because I would have loved to message my kinda-boyfriend-but-not-really, but all I know is his constant reminders of how busy he is with work means he’s not really available to respond to my hastily written messages (also, I’m currently acting unavailable to get him back for just suddenly telling me he was going home for the weekend - he’ll suffer, I’m sure). It wasn’t something I could bother my other friends with; I knew I just wanted to complain and I was pretty sure most people wouldn’t be impressed by it. But I felt a little shitty, and annoyed, because I hate feeling like I always have to deal with stuff alone all the time. It’s not that I can’t handle it, I just want a simple “gambatte (keep fighting!)” from my sorta-maybe-boyfriend; is that too much to ask?!

I opened up my work email to see a message from O-san.

“Hullo, Amanda

Weather’s great today

Would you like to go with me tonight?

→to the Takuboku-Kenji Youth Museum (10min walk)

I’ll take an hour off so we can leave at 4:30 together.

What say you.                                               O-san”

I weighed my options: 1) Going home and eating junk food while eating Perez or 2) Hanging out with my Japanese uncle at a museum. I did rather want to go home and brood, but once again I was reminded of what Jason told us at Ritsumeikan all those years ago: “Say yes to all stuff you want to say no to.” That advice has never really failed me - whenever I want to sit around and avoid people, and someone manages to drag me out, I end up feeling so much better. I grudgingly replied that I’d go.

I went up to his office at half past four, and he was already standing, ready to go. “Cool Biz started today!” he said, pointing to his open collar. Cool Biz is the period of time between June 1 and September 30 where government workers are encouraged to wear lighter clothes, no ties and no suit jackets, so that they can save money on air conditioning costs. It’s still cold in Iwate so not many guys had chosen to follow the rules to a t (-shirt), as it were.

“Every day is Cool Biz for me,” I grinned. I’ve forgotten what men look like without ties, to be honest.

We walked to the museum, me pushing my bike alongside him, blocking the sidewalk and annoying our fellow Moriokans, trying to get home from work. He led me to a small building the local citizen’s center - an old, nondescript western-style building. “This is the Takuboku-Kenji Youth Museum,” O-san explained. “The building used to be a bank. Whew, it’s so cool looking.” An architect by trade, O-san gazed at the tall, narrow windows as I secured my bike. “Be careful,” he reminded me, “Morioka can be a dangerous place.” Morioka’s not really a dangerous place, but O-san is pretty paternal, so I let him check my rusty lock and everything.

The museum itself was small, only a room or two, detailing the lives of Ishikawa Takuboku and Miyazawa Kenji, two of the most famous men in Iwate. Miyazawa in particular really put Iwate on the map, an author of children’s literature who wrote “Ginga Tetsudo no Yoru (Night on the Galactic Railroad)” - a story about two young boys who take a trip on a train through the galaxy that everyone in Japan knows and loves. I just love the imagery he evokes, and how it is connected to Iwate, or Ihatov, as he called it. It’s Esperanto for Iwate, and for “homeland.” I can look up at the sky of Ihatov country and imagine I can see an iron coal train, gliding through the stars. That’s the kind of place this is.

(well, if I wanted to be practical about it, I could always just take the IGR Iwate Galactic Railway up to Aomori, but that might ruin the fun, now wouldn’t it)

We walked through the “Morioka in the time of Kenji” exhibit, seeing old pictures of the prefectural office (did you know that 県庁 (kencho/pref. office) used to be written 縣廰???) and wooden displays of Morioka in the early 1900s. O-san would explain things I didn’t understand, and he would praise me whenever I could read a difficult kanji compound or knew some obscure fact about Morioka. After being tutted at by the museum lady who reminded us they closed in 15 minutes, we entered the final exhibit - a tiny room plastered with an artist’s interpretation of Ye Olde Moriokey. A recording played in the background, and all of a sudden a blacklight went on, lighting up the ceiling with painted illuminescent stars.

I noticed a huge red star with a bird flying into it. “What is that?” I asked. “The star in the North?!” (北の星 kitanohoshi, ie, my made up word for the North Star)

O-san let out a huge guffaw. “You mean the North Star?” (北極星 hokkyokusei) He couldn’t stop giggling at my creative phrasing, his teeth glowing in the blacklight.

“Thank you,” he said as we exited. “I’ve always wanted to go but I’ve never had anyone to go with.”

“No, no, no, thank you,” I responded, steadying my bike. “I kinda feeling a bit down today, so I’m glad you invited me.” We slowly sauntered down Sakanacho, a local shopping arcade a couple minutes from the prefectural office. The bell for six o’clock rang, signaling to the shop owners to start shutting down their businesses for the day - the shops that were left, anyway. Nobody really goes to Sakanacho but old people, since the only shops left open are old people clothing stores, a fabric store, an old department store, a few banks and a 100 yen shop. The McDonald’s at the corner closed down, for chrissakes. For a McD’s to close down you have to be at your dying gasp as a shopping area.

“Oh, you were a bit down, huh?” He was silent for a moment before spotting a Doutor coffee chain in the distance. ”Wanna drink some coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.”

We sat, sipping lattes, chatting about random things. Whenever O-san would get tired of a topic he would fly right into the next one, but I found that I was used to it now so I could improvise on the fly. I noticed though that, for the first time, I would say things and he actually seemed like he was listening. I enjoy O-san’s company, but he’s not the first person I would go to to share my problems, but on this day it actually seemed like he was paying attention. It probably was the first time it had been just the two of us, I realized.

We talked about how Japanese people overwork themselves and how the stability of working for the prefectural government can actually zap all creativity out of some poor people. I complained lightly about my crush and how he has someone he likes and how I wish I knew how to compete (and I wish I knew how to just give up already). I talked to him about how sometimes I felt so incompetent at work - how I never really feel good at anything, and I asked, did you ever feel that way, as a young person starting out? “I still feel that way,” he smiled. “But I’m not really the worrying type.”

I told him how I kinda want to try out for this manga competition for Iwate. “The point is to draw a short story that makes people think, I wanna go to Iwate. I wanna live in Iwate. I’m thinkin’ my main angle will be how Iwate is seen by a foreigner.”

O-san seemed to like this idea, smiling and nodding. “Definitely. Your eyes are different.”

“Huh?! What does that have to do with it?” I asked, drawing round circles around my eyes with my fingers. Then I realized he had said my “perspective” was different, not my eyes (Well, my eyes are different, so I guess he has a point). Perhaps I’ll have someone check my Japanese script before I start drawing, at least.

I bid goodbye to him after an hour, and we parted at the crosswalk. He was heading home to practice some calligraphy, and I was heading home to relax before going to bed. But my mood was so much better than it would have been if I had just blown him off to eat some junk food. I’m a moody person, and I probably always will be - but if I remind myself that I can lean on my friends and family once in a while, it snaps me out of it, it reminds me to get over it. That’s one of the things that was nice about being home - getting to go home and forgetting about anything that I was bothering me, because I always had my family.

Well, I guess I will always have O-papa too.