Immaculate

I brush the dust off of my jacket. I love black but it shows every spec of dust and debris to the point it is almost not worth it. Many people think black is a dirty color because it is the opposite of white. But really the inky crispness of black is clean in a way that the fragile cleanliness of white cannot be. But they are both clean, immaculate colors. Kirei. It is grey that I think is unclean, ugly. It is neither black nor white. Then again I hate color in general.
I know I live and work in world of loud color. Billboards seek to catch everyone’s eyes with neon. Moe blobs dance on a screen to entice the otkau into their world. Even in the ties my coworkers wear to express their “individuality” or “personal style” (which they have none of) are brightly colored but it’s so easy to see a stain. And I do not know who they are trying to fool. Everyone knows their mothers and girlfriends chose their ties for them anyway. I sometimes wish life was like Casablanca, black and white. I could permit maybe a little grey if that were the case. I love old movies for their soft understatements. Using color feels like cheating and it clutters the film.
And yes, my apartment is black and white. I like it that way. I, unlike some of my acquaintances, have my own place and I clean it myself. I hate, abhor, daikirai, mess. Messy house, messy mind, messy life. Tokyo is messy but my corner is clean, immaculate even. If my apartment was not immaculate than it means I should just let myself go and become Not In Education Employment or Training.
Being on the train feels messy. Ueno is one stop from Akihabara and there’s always at least three grown slovenly men playing their Playstaion Portables or Nintendo with some animated “moe moe” star. I sometimes get stared at by women or men on the train too. Today is one of those days. I look good I suppose, though unusual. My nose looks untidy, like it doesn’t fit my face. It makes me look foreign. In school someone pointed out it looked like one of the Roman busts we painfully attempted to sketch in art class. I both love and hate my messy nose. But maybe that’s what they like. Or they are attracted to my impeccable, meticulous grooming. Perhaps while they look they are imagining doing lascivious things to me or with me. That makes my skin crawl. She looks at me and I look back at her in the reflection in the train door. I attempt to convey with my eyes that not only am I not interested. Not in women, not in men, not in animated things. I do not see the point of sex, particularly from a hygiene perspective the whole idea seems almost laughable and utterly pointless to me. If I even try to picture having sex I just get annoyed. Sweaty sheets, sharing a bed with another person, exchanging fluids…them mussing my hair. Where would I put my nose? The idea of sex, which most days feels everywhere, is just tiresome to me. Why bother? I find many other things pleasurable. Like seeing the train clear out at Akihabara, like the sonata on my music player, like my immaculate apartment. I see the woman get off their too. She looks back at me. I wipe my coat of what would appear to some imaginary dust and her from a metaphoric point of view. I think about cleaning out my closet. The ordering is soothing, relaxing, possibly akin to the feeling I’ve unwillingly heard others describe as orgasm. I can’t waste my time with that half of the thought process. My stop is next and the train gets messier, along with my coat.
I got on the same train as this rather striking man on the Yamanote line. I was sitting next to my husband trying to figure out his story and what his job was. I thought “fashion?” but why be in Ueno and not Shibuya? So I just gave him an unspecified job and focused on how meticulously groomed he was.

Juxtaposition is a funny word.

I really like spending time with Mayumi! She’s such a good friend and a really good listener. I don’t really have a lot of friends and I never have but she is always there and she is always willing to hang out with me. I’m so happy because I really feel like for once I have a friend. My mother said I would have more friends if I didn’t talk so much but there’s so much silence everywere else. Silence on the train, silence in my house, silence ever surrounds me in a loud classroom when Mayumi isn’t there because no oe wants to tlak to me. It didn’t used to be so quiet but things have gotten so much quieter now. My dad is never home and my mom is working a part time job. It’s ever so hard to be in a silent house. Every noise or stir could be something bad waiting to happen. I go home and I turn on the TV really loud so that I almost can’t hear anything else. I listen to my music so loud as I walk home because I don’t live at the same stop as Mayumi which is really sad because I would like to talk to her so much. No one talks at home. We all live in our own little places with our own noise but no one talks anymore… I wish they would just get divorce but I don’t. There’s a girl in my class whose parents are divorced and they alternate between her and me. If I didn’t have Mayumi I think I would have taken a good way out of a bad situation this year. But I know I bother her. Deep down I know she doesn’t want me. She told me so outside the station once in the fall. I try and put it out of my head as best I can but it always comes back when I get off the train and walk home with no one to talk to. It was raining that day and we’d forgotten out umbrellas. I heard some girls talking about how I smelled and if Mayumi didn’t leave me alone she’d start to smell too. I’m so used to “gusai” and “busu” that it sounds as normal as train noise.
“I didn’t want attention” she yelled as I tried to bike to keep you “They always left me alone! You’re annoying! I can see why your parents don’t want to be around you! I wish you would quit bugging me!” She sped away and I feel off my bike, skinning my knee. I started crying loudly, like a small child cries when they lose their mommy in a store. Crying this way is so familiar to me. In the rain and tears I make it to the station and I see her standing there in our usual spot under the shelter. She sighs and I run towards her, child still crying and she hugs me. People stare at us because I’m childishly crying and she’s comforting me. We are so different but in that hug all is forgiven.

Heichi-suru is a funny word. Juxtaposition. It sounds odd but it’s a big word and is fun to read. It’s one of my College study words in English. No matter how much my ALT helps me with it, I can’t say it./ I can say position but not the first part. Side by side, opposed, contrasting, all words for my sort of kind of not really friend. I hate talking and she won’t shut up. She’s always bullied and I’m ignored. Even her parents hate her. Mine love me. She has long hair that’s straight. I have curly short hair and glasses. I had a strategy to get through high school, but it was ruined because I had to absentmindedly answer her hello one day. She clings to me like a barnicale. I think the only reason why the other kids don’t bully me is they get that I’m not really her friend. They see how different we are so we can’t really be friends. I’m safe, mostly. She’s like a puppy you know, no matter how many times you curse at it or throw rocks at it, it keeps coming back because you fed it once. I know that’s not nice but it feels that way sometimes. I just don’t like people talking to me. I want to be left alone but most people mistake that for being a good listener. I know deep down no one listens to her and that’s why she talks so much. Or does she talk so much which causes no one to listen to her. Chicken or egg I suppose.
I got annoyed with her one day. Actually I was flat out enraged. The pretty girls said I was starting to smell or I would become a saikin (bacteria) too if I hung around with her. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. On the bike she kept trying to get me to talk, to comfort me. I didn’t want to be comforted. I wanted her, everyone out of my life. I didn’t stop when I heard her bike fall. I only waited for her because I thought she might kill herself and I didn’t want it to be my fault. Not like I think anyone would really care. Well I would, maybe. I stayed waiting for her. She ran towards me, soaking and bloody and crying like a brat. She threw her arms around me and I didn’t really complain. I guess she’s my friend. But I’m still always happy when she gets off the train before me. We’re too different, juxtaposed to last much longer.

I saw these two girls twice. I couldn’t foirget their faces because the first time I saw them the ywere huddled together under an awning in Hiroshima station and one of them was unabashedly bawling her eyes out. I saw them months later putting their bikes away and it reminded me I hadn’t written their story yet. I had to race to my train and who should come racing behind me but the two girls. It gave me a better chance to observe their dynamic and come up with a clearer narrative. I like seeing people I’ve written about again. So far, they are the only people I’ve seen again.

Doomed Romance

I have a secret crush, a lot like most of the girls in my class. What’s different is who my crush is on. It’s not on the prince of the school (like we really have one here). It’s not on a boy I’ve known since elementary school. It’s not a coworker. I’ve only known this guy for almost a year. We haven’t been close for very long either. He’s very handsome and cool and fun and
He’s a teacher at my school. He’s a newish teacher and he’s one of the teachers in charge of my class. He doesn’t know. Well I think he doesn’t know anyway. I hope he doesn’t know because if he found out I would be completely mortified and never come to school again. I used to skip school a bit but I don’t mind coming now because I get to see him. I still skip classes, hang out in the nurses room with a stomach ache but I’m still at school and as long as I’m at school there’s a chance that I can see him and that makes it ok. It probably seems like I’m really scatterbrained to him, always messing up forms or something. But I really do it because it makes him speak to me. I don’t play sports and I’m a girl so if it weren’t for messing up my forms we wouldn’t get to talk as much as we do.
I’ve never been shy around him either, but I’m not a shy person and I think that goes a long way to disguising my feelings. If I suddenly got quiet around him it would be really obvious. So I just change how I act with everyone else. I stand a bit too close to everyone, touch everyone more. That way when I stand close to him it just seems like I’m disrespecting people’s personal space again and not that I’m showing my feelings.
It doesn’t hurt, because it’s not like I have any idea that I’ll actually get it, his love that is. Being close to him isn’t painful, seeing him talk with other girls doesn’t make me jealous. I have no expectations of ever having him look at me the way I try not to look at him. While this doesn’t mean I don’t think about how someday it would be nice to run into him and have him fall in love with me, it’s not an all consuming thought. I have many more all consuming thoughts like work tonight and how I’m going to pass my English test this week. It’s something fun that distracts me from the forms which are telling me exactly what I’ll be doing for a bit after graduation. While it’s true I should stick with one company I could see myself going other places. My crush on sensei* is kind of like that. I can see my eye shifting down the years. I’m not one of those heroines who will carry her first love with her for the rest of eternity. I’ll leave high school in April and I’m almost positive I’ll meet someone else. I make friends easily though people,e are sometimes put off by how loud I am. I think he’s a little put off too but he’s patient with me. He’s put off because he’s worried. I hope he’s not put off because he’s figured out that I like him. I don’t want him to find out because he wouldn’t understand. He would think I’m just so stupid loud girl in love with her teacher but that isn’t it and while I don’t know what it is, that isn’t it. This is why when we talk I deliberately shift my attention to everything else in the room. IN a way it prolongues how much time we get to spend. I don’t care if he thinks I’m flightly. I am and I’m sure someone will ike that even if he doesn’t.
Our time is ending. This crush has a clock on it. I’ve decided that my feelings for sensei will end when the school year ends. I’m not going to tell him on graduation day or anything so dramatic. I’ve just decided that when I leave school for the last time on that day I will leave my feelings in my desk for whoever wishes to occupy it next. I’ll just walk away from them. I think then, if he found them there, it would be okay and like I said, years later he can meet up with me and I can find my feelings again. But I’m a high school student so a little doomed romance is okay, ne?
Sensei- teacher
Ne- isn’t it, it’s a sentence ender.
I saw this girl outside a school I walked past in the city. She was really vibrant and definitely posessesd that “zest for living” MEXT is always saying its my job to instill. She was standing really close to the male teacher who looked both oblivious and utterly aware of what her body language was saying. He looked like he was picking up on her feelings subconsciously but consciously she was just standing obnoxiously close (I even thought so and I come from a huge family that has no concept of personal space).

Unlike a Comic

It’s getting darker earlier but at least there are less bugs now when I wait. The station is completely open so it’s boiling and mosquito infested in the summer and freezing in the winter. I just missed the train into the city so I have to wait. I take out my phone and email Nori-chan that I’ll be late. She sends me an email back full of emoji* and it makes me smile. We continue mailing each other while I wait for the train. She just makes my frustration evaporate. Even though I’m nervous around her, I’m still really at ease with her if that makes any sense.
That’s how I know I want to marry her. I mean, I know it’s a given as long as we continue to date without problems that I’ll ask her to marry me. The problem is I think I was ready to ask her after we’d been dating a week. We’d been friends for a bit longer but I’d always liked her. It didn’t feel like we’d only been dating a week. I even think about the wedding sometimes but I know it’s not really something a guy’s supposed to do. What can I say, I’m a young man in love. Though I’m self conscious about my love. I haven’t told her that I’m in love with her because I’m not in high school anymore. I also fdon’t live in a shojo manga comic but that’s blantantly clear to anyone who’s heard me try to be smooth. I really just want to know how to say the right thing. Everytime I think I’m going to finally say it, when she looks up at me so expectantly, my tongue feels like it takes up my whole mouth and I’ve suddenly forgotten how to speak Japanese. Maybe I need a phrasebook like the tourists at Starbucks have. I need a menu of phrases I can read off and point to and hope that she’ll know what I mean.
I’m pretty sure she does but that doesn’t make it any less annoying that I can’t bring my mouth to form the words “daisuki desu”*. It was hard enough to bring myself to say “suki ja”* Sometimes I practice in the mirror. I have a sticker of us on the mirror and I practice saying it over and over. It gets easier as I say it, puffing my chest out, trying different voices. But it still never quite sounds like me. Considering how hard it is to say it I suspect that if the characters in the managa were real people they must just spit it out. Or they’re a lot smoother than me. I wish I had a girl mangaka who would write my dialogue for me. I mean, if I can’t even say it how am I ever going to ask her to marry me?
I mean I can imagine that I do it in this smooth fashion on Christmas eve. I take her to her favorite restaurant. I have the ring, it’s perfect. It’s not too big, she doesn’t like really big jewelry. It’s just right for her hand. As we’re finishing the perfect course of the perfect meal I slide the ring over and ask her if she will stay with me forever. It all comes so easily in my head. It’s always easier to decide what words I want to say than to actually say them. I don’t think I could be that smooth in reality. Plus in my fantasy I use the word perfect too much which distracts from how perfect it would actually be.
But I want things to be perfect because to me, she is perfect. Even things she considers to be hideous flaws, like the freckle on her check or the fact that no matter how much cream she uses, she’s still tan. It’s not that I don’t see these things it’s that I don’t care about htem because they’re her, and…I love her. There, I said it. But it’s still just in my head to an imaginary audience while I wait for the Kabe line that goes towards Hiroshima City to come. So naturally it doesn’t count. I wonder if she likes the fact that I tumble over my words around her.
Nah, girls only want kakkoi* guys so I’m fairly confident in one thing: that she thinks I’m a doofus. But as I read her email I wonder, if maybe I’m lucky and she actually does find my clumsiness endearing. Maybe, she even loves me too.
Daisuki desu: Love. You can also use this for things you really like. It’s a less strong way of saying “I love you” (the strong way is aishiteru, in case you’re curious)
Suki ja: Like. Suki is the adjective for like and “ja” is subbed in for “da”(informal desu) in Hiroshima-ben. It makes you sound manly.
Manga- comics
Mangaka- the person who draws and writes manga
Kakkoi- cool.
On one of my visits to Mitaki I saw this guy waiting for the train into the city. He started off really tense but gradually relaxed and sank in his seat as he looked at something on his phone. I mean for all I know he could have been reading 2-chan but he looked a bit like a more Japanese version of Marten from Questionable Content. He also had a very relaxed expression on his face so he must have been reading something happy. So because I like Marten I decided he was looking at an email from his Japanese Dora. Though once I sat down to write his voice isn’t really Marten’s at all which is good because plagruism is bad.