Saturday was a nice relaxing day for me. Kuniko started off at my place and went to a BBQ for her exchange students in the afternoon, so I spent the day relaxing and reading for pleasure. Late in the afternoon I got a message from Kuniko that she was leaving early, so I hit the road for Kobe and met up with her at Kobe station around four o’clock.
We walked around the area, looking at shops and enjoying the scenery, but soon Kuniko developed a dull pain in her hip. We tried sitting down for a while and resting, and that seemed to help, but when we got walking again the pain came back. At one point we sat down and I was giving her hip and back a firm massage to try and loosen up the muscles. The problem with doing a firm massage to a woman’s hips in public when you are a foreigner in a foreign country is that you attract a lot of attention. So, we didn’t do that so much.
After a while though, she felt better, and so we walked out to Mosaic to meet up with Tsuji-san and her boyfriend. This was my first time meeting him, and he seemed like a really nice guy. Since he doesn’t speak a word of English we decided to do the whole evening in Japanese. That made for an interesting atmosphere, because it was really up to me to keep the conversation going, but my conversations were limited to what my vocabulary could do. Things were slow at first, but with Kuniko helping me out we soon were talking comfortably enough. I made lots of mistakes, and people kindly corrected me, and so I learned a lot.
We had decided to go to the Brazilian restaurant – a meat-oriented place that is well-known in the Kobe area. It’s an all you can eat restaurant, but you are limited by how often the guys come over with meat to deliver to your table.
After dinner we walked back towards the station to go to Sweets Harbor, kind of a food court/theme park dedicated to desserts. Strangely enough, it closed at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night – which seemed like a really bad time to close a place that specializes in dessert.
Instead we walked across the street to Starbucks and had some coffee and chatted some more. I tried to give some advice to them about meeting the family for the first time, and things of that nature. Hopefully it will be helpful.
One thing that was really interesting about their relationship is how Tsuji-san has a background of traveling and living overseas. She leans a little more towards the western way of thinking, and it seems like her fiancée is more of a traditional Japanese guy when it comes to relationships and roles.
Tsuji-san told me that after months and months of waiting for him to propose, she checked in with him last week to see if he was really serious about this or not. He said he was, citing extreme shyness as a factor, and then proposed to her right there. Tsuji-san told me that it was weird timing – like if she hadn’t asked about it he wouldn’t have proposed. I guess that took a little bit of the romance out of it for her.
Also, they have to work out what their roles will be. He wants her to quit her job and stay at home, and she just got a great job that she loves and she feels a responsibility towards them to stay with it for a while. The idea that she should be at home is definitely a traditional Japanese one – and her idea of working as well is more of a western one. Which idea wins remains to be seen.
