Love Attacks!

After having suffered such a humiliating defeat at the hands of Naochi, I set myself upon enlisting the aid of a higher power, and prayed that evening with that very goal in mind. If I remember correctly, my prayer went something like this: “WAAAAH! WAAAAAH! God! Give me romance! WAAAH!” The events which unfolded thereafter, however, proved to be a valuable lesson for me on the importance of specificity in prayer.

In the meantime, I had made the acquaintance of a certain young lady who attended the same church as I did. After the service every week she would race up to me and stammer out a string of practically incomprehensible questions in broken English, usually about such pressing matters as the cultural and economic make-up of the state of Texas. If there was a pageant for ‘Miss Boring Japan’ I was sure Kaori would have won. That being said, it may surprise you to hear what eventually happened, because it sure surprised the heck out of me.

One Sunday, while the bitterness of my complete humiliation at the merciless hands of Lovemaster Naochi was still fresh on my palate, Kaori invited me to a barbecue with some of her friends. It sounded innocent enough: a small group of intimate friends gathering at the beach for food, games, and what have you. A day at the beach might do me some good and help me get my mind off of Naochi, I thought. I did have some classroom activities to coordinate that afternoon, however, so I told Kaori I would give her a call if I finished my work on time.

As fate would have it, I finished my work within about 15 minutes, so I had the entire afternoon and evening free. Thinking that an evening spent with Miss Boring Japan was no worse than an uneventful evening at home by myself, I accordingly called Kaori to let her know that I would be ‘delighted’ to accompany her to the beach party. She said that she would come pick me up in front of my apartment around four. Looking back now, I am sure she must have hung up on the other end of the line with an evil cackle.

When 3:55 rolled around, I decided it was about time to get ready to leave, so I combed my hair, put on a baseball cap, and stepped outside to wait for Kaori at the curb. I sat waiting for probably ten minutes, watching the cars drive by from left to right on the one-way street in front of my apartment, but there was no sign of Kaori. Around 4:15, I was beginning to think she might not be coming, but then out of the corner of my eye I spied something approaching from the right. When I turned to look in that direction, I realized that it could only be Kaori driving the miniature blue Daihatsu against the flow of traffic. I quickly attempted to formulate an escape plan in my mind, but alas, I was too slow. Her car drew closer as I was frantically running through excuses in my mind to get me out of going with her:

‘Kaori, I’m sorry I won’t be able to go with you today. The English Ministry has invented some new vocabulary that I’ll be teaching in class tomorrow. I need to stay home and learn them.’

‘Kaori, I’m sorry I won’t be able to go with you after all. My friend asked me to watch her fish while she’s gone over the weekend and the little guy’s sick. I don’t think he’s going to pull through.’

‘Kaori! The NHK guy is coming tonight. I need to be here when he comes, so I can’t go…’

“MIKE-SAN! OMATASE!” she yelled as she brought the diminutive vehicle to a screeching halt in front of where I was standing.

(‘Oh…crap…’) “Hi!”

She immediately popped out of the car, went around to the passenger’s side where another young woman was sitting, and held the car door open.

“This is my cousin, Wakako,” she explained to me kindly, while shooing Wakako out of the way and into the back seat.

Met with a steady stream of unintelligible mutter emanating from the lips of Wakako, I offered a sheepish “Anoo. Hajimemashite…” and settled in to the typically cramped Japanese passenger’s seat with my chin on my knees. As Kaori closed the door and went back around to the driver’s side, I noticed something that began to fill my delicate bachelor heart with terror. There, seated menacingly on the dashboard, was a small plush Minnie Mouse doll, complete with wedding dress, veil, and bouquet. When Kaori prepared to turn the engine, she noticed my gaze transfixed by the demon object.

“Oh, that’s my dream!” she commented innocently enough.

“Uh…you want to be a mouse?” I inquired, attempting to diffuse the increasingly hostile situation.

“No! I want to be a bride.”

My heart raced ninety miles an hour as I scrambled for an exit strategy from the already moving vehicle. Drawing nothing but blanks, I turned to nervously fumbling with the various toys and implements inside the car. This led me to pick up and insert my hand into a giant white Mickey Mouse glove that happened to be lying there by the seat, at which point Kaori mentioned that, “That’s going to fit the hand of my future husband,” and here is where I promptly flung off the glove into the back seat, stopped touching things, and sat apoplectic for the remainder of the 45 minute journey. I did however maintain enough presence of mind to emit a scream of horror here and there when I felt as if Kaori’s driving was going to put and end to all three of our tragically short existences.

Thankfully, we did find our way to the party site at the beach in good time. Good enough time, in fact, that we were even able to throw in three or four passes through the town and several middle-of-the-road u-turns for good measure before we decided to actually turn out onto the beach. When we pulled up to the pavilion where Kaori’s friends had set up camp, I was rather surprised to discover about twenty people or so milling around. When Kaori first mentioned this little shindig to me, I was under the impression that it was to be an intimate little gathering of perhaps five or six close friends. I wasn’t expecting the entire village to show up and gawk at the foreigner. My increasing discomfort with the situation was compounded when asked to fork over a thousand yen for the food, in traditional Japanese fashion. It may sound strange, but where I come from if you have to pay you can’t call it a party. That’s more like a black-tie formal dinner. So here I was, sitting alone with the now ‘Miss Psycho Boring Japan’ in a crowd of twenty Japanese people who I don’t know from Adam, partaking of a 1000-yen black-tie dinner consisting of faux Vienna sausages and Chinese noodles. I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.

Fortunately though, the party itself wasn’t near as frightening as the rest of my evening, except perhaps for the hapless fellow who somehow seemed eager to challenge me to a drinking contest. On the down side, I did forget to bring my swim trunks and, it being a beach party, I was a bit at a loss. But the shorts I was wearing served as admirable replacements, even if I had to endure the forty-five minute ride home with salt and sand rustling about in some rather intimate locations. There was a bit of a shock in store for me, though, as we were preparing to leave: as the three of us strolled away from the pavilion, I heard my drinking buddy call out in a voice audible halfway to North Korea, “GOOD-BYE MICKEY!” and, remembering the demon doll ensconced on Kaori’s dashboard, a terrible shudder shot up and down my spine.

The return trip in the miniature blue Daihatsu of Death was as exciting a prospect as I had come to expect through my brief association with Kaori. She struggled to stay awake while driving, and once every two minutes or so I would do my bit of public service by slapping her smartly on the arm to keep her from careening off the levee which the road happened to be following and plunging to our deaths in the merciless Shinano River below. At one point, I spied a tanuki frantically scrambling for cover at the sight of our car swerving across the lane at his unwieldy, furry form.

“Oh wow!” I managed to note between my intermittent frightened sobs and clenched teeth, “There’s a tanuki.”

“What tanuki?” Kaori asked.

“Umm…the tanuki we almost RAN OVER!”

“…..oh.”

Other than these few, trifling matters, I should say, I felt relatively safe. I mean, Japan is the safest country in the world, supposedly. So I did arrive safely at home, but that evening would not be complete without a few select finishing touches from Kaori.

Still sweating profusely from the rigors of the journey, I said a brief goodbye and made to open my car door as quickly as possible while still remaining relatively civil. However, as I was fumbling with the handle in the dark, I heard Kaori mention that she had a ‘nice time’ and I immediately felt something warm and wet on my right cheek. Realizing I had been smacked with the kiss of death, I mumbled something about me having a nice time too and resumed my attempt to obtain my freedom. Once I had managed to exit the car, I turned around just in time to find a menacing hand ambling directly for my crotch, and as most men would have done sensing a comparable danger, I assumed the triple P – Private Protection Position – and screamed an altogether assertive and forceful “NOOOOOO….!!” that stopped the phantom hand where it stood hovering in mid-air.

“My towel…..” came the feeble voice from inside the darkened car.

“Your towel is not in my pan…!” I began, but then remembered that I was, in fact, wearing her towel around my waist so as to protect her upholstery from my sodden behind. “Oh…sorry. Um, here you go,” and I meekly offered her the towel. After another round of good-byes and good-nights I was finally free to return to the comforting confines of my own apartment where I could piece together the remains of my eventful day.

I shut and locked the door behind me, threw off my shoes where I stood in the genkan, and headed for the bathroom to take a shower and get ready for bed. As I collapsed in an exhausted lump in my futon on the floor, I looked up at the ceiling with a slightly incredulous look.

“Okay, okay, very funny. Ha ha. Good one, God, but when I said ‘give me romance’ that’s not exactly what I had in mind. Here, let me elaborate…” and I was just about to launch into my list of the 109 characteristics of the ideal woman when all the weight of the day’s adventures finally caught up with me and I nodded off. I figure that’s at least as good as counting a bunch of stinky sheep, though.