You should know that if you ever go to Japan, you will never, ever pour your own drink. A carafe of crystal clear sake will be sitting on the table in front of you, and should your hand even flinch in its direction, should you even glance at your glass – your Japanese friend Emi, sitting next to you in the booth, or her kind-of-sort-of boyfriend Haru-san, sitting across from her, or perhaps your date, a ladies’ man with a glittering smile named Katsu-san, will immediately take the carafe and top off your glass, which is little bigger than a shot glass. This – the topping off of your dainty little Japanese-sized glass – will occur countless times during your Dinner of Raw and Mysterious Non-Translated Foods. It will happen so often in fact, you will be gloriously drunk in a matter of minutes before you even realize it, because, you see, you’ll never completely empty your glass before it’s filled up again. Not once. Your drunken state is heightened due to the small portions of the Dinner of Raw and Mysterious Non-Translated Foods.
It’s weird enough, being in place where you can’t read anything, can’t speak the language. But people here only need to look at you, they don’t even need you to open your mouth to know that you’re a tourist. You’re taller than everyone, you’re paler than most, and you’re definitely, definitely blond. The attention is alarming at first, but then kind of fun. (You kind of hope a stranger will request to take your picture with them, but no one does.) And now, being more than a little tipsy on this unexpected double date in a country you think both beautiful and mysterious, the disorientation of intoxication is unnerving. There is a blanket of anxiety over just about everything. There is that feeling of being so…American. You’d never thought about being an American before – not like this, anyway. You’d never thought of yourself and applied the word foreign. Not until you traveled here. And now you are on a makeshift double date in a tiny sushi bar, with bright raw slabs of fish on the plate in front of you, and you think your date is pretty cute, but you’ve never been on a date with someone outside your country so you don’t know how to act, and you’re getting more and more drunk with every sip out of your big shot glass, and really, how are you supposed to handle it?
You have come here to stay with Emi’s family and you have vowed to be bold. You are not a bold person, but you have just travelled across an ocean for the first time, and so you try boldness on like a new sweater to see if it fits right.
And it mostly does.
“I will eat raw fish!” you cry.
“I will, like Homer Simpson, bravely eat blowfish and not die!”
“I will eat moving-not-quite-dead fish! …Or at least I’ll think about it!”
“I will bathe naked in an outdoor hot spring with strangers!”
And you do. You do not once complain about the small food portions or discuss how much bigger the cars are in the U.S. You gallantly drink tea at every meal, in between meals, for dessert, and before you go to bed. (And pee constantly because of it.) But you love it, all of it.
When you first arrived here, you were worried about offending someone accidentally, like not taking your shoes off in the right place. Or at the very least, getting into a bowing match, like a scene from a 1980s sitcom when the Japanese businessman comes to visit. You soon learn though that as an American, you aren’t expected to have knowledge of any of the Japanese social graces. Every faux pas is forgiven. You soon realize you could do anything – belch, yell out a cat call, swear – and no one would bat an eye. At least not to your face. It’s pretty awesome.
But back to the Dinner of Raw and Mysterious Non-Translated Foods. You’ve become a little enamored of your Japanese date, Katsu-san. He’s more gregarious and expressive than the reserved Haru-san. Katsu-san is cute, if a little too frat-boy for your taste – dressed in a crisp green button down shirt, dark jeans, and black shoes that all look overpriced. He is not your type, but then again, you probably aren’t his. Still, you find yourself giggling with him, which makes you forget about worrying how exactly to eat the oversized slice of glistening pink fish flesh in front of you.
Wait – he’s saying something to you. His English isn’t very good, but it’s better than your Japanese. What’s he talking about? A movie? Oh dear God. He’s asking you if you’ve seen the movie “Pearl Harbor.” What do you say?
“No, I haven’t seen it,” you say, pushing grains of rice around on your plate with your chopsticks.
Um, this is awkward, right? I’m in Japan talking about Pearl Harbor. Oh, this can’t be good, can it? I’m too tipsy and what if I say something stupid? What if I say something that I think is harmless, but I end up offending them? Surely discussing the events of World War II in Japan with people you barely know is dangerous territory. More sake. Don’t I need more sake? You reach for the carafe, but Katsu-san beats you to it and fills your glass. “Um, did you like the movie?” you ask him, meekly.
“It, it,” he pauses. He can’t find the word he’s searching for. “I…I…” he trails off, then brings his fists up to eyes and twists them in a crying motion. “I…wah-hah-hah.”
He cried? That’s wonderful. That’s fantastic. Weird, but fantastic. At least we’re all laughing now. You take the carafe out of Katsu-san’s hand and pour some sake into his glass. Everyone applauds you for adopting the Japanese custom. You hope that it makes them forget about the movie and its awkward time period.
When dinner is over, Katsu-san drives you all in his surprisingly large car – Jesus, it’s almost an SUV – to the bustling train station. He makes a big deal about opening the car door for you. “La-dies fir-st,” he says, motioning for you to get into the car. Everyone laughs at his Westernized gesture, but you think it’s kind of sweet. When he drops you off, everyone gets out of the car and you walk together to the entrance of the station. Haru-san says goodbye with a quick kiss to Emi’s cheek and with a swift bow, heads for a train going in the opposite direction that you are. It’s just you, Emi, and Katsu-san. You wonder what Katsu-san expects from his American date at the end of the night. But before you know it, Emi is bowing deeply in his direction and you follow her lead. You want to, like an American, reach for his hand, you might even want to kiss him – because why not? But before you decide what to do, Emi takes your palm in hers and leads you away toward the train station before you can do anything that will embarrass her.
“The train is never late,” she says to you, a smile almost curling on her lips. “Mandy-chan, the train is never late.”
Amanda E. Snyder hails from the Windy City but lives in San Francisco, where she just completed her MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. She is a co-creator and former performer at RUI: Reading Under the Influence, and has read her writing for 2nd Story, on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, for Lit Gangs of Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Quiet Lightning and more. Her work has appeared in RedEye, on metromix.com, Chicago Literati and elsewhere. Visit her at www.amandaesnyder.com.