We got the 10.30am bus back to Irkustk main town and just lazed around until our train that evening which would leave at 1.20am. I posed a letter I’d written to Maki. Aki was ending me emails that just made me feel bad, sad, guilty but also a little angry. It was clear she wanted to make me feel bad and that had been a continuing theme for the last half of our relationship. I remember how she would express that I always wanted to be with friends, female friends, and never had time for her, and never gave her enough attention. Aki wanted to visit me in July, which seemed strange to me. It was always known that when I leave we’ll always be in touch but we couldn’t continue romantically. We both knew it but Aki wouldn’t accept it and hated my acceptance of it. Regardless of the time bomb nature of our relationship, we never fitted right. We survived mostly of a need not to be lonely. Her loneliness came from being single with no marriage prospects aged twenty-eight and a father who died in a car crash when she was nineteen, an age at which she was just starting to get to know her father. My loneliness came from being in a completely foreign country and not being entirely happy about it. I had no true close friends when I met Aki and I lived in a small apartment with two other guys with whom I had nothing in common. There was Jon, a twenty-two year old Canadian who had just graduated and spent all his time on his laptop, chatting to his Canadian friends on MSN, downloading Canadian basketball games and watching movies. He hardly went out and his tap-tap-tapping from his room next to me drove me crazy and would only cease at around 3 or 4am. The other guy was Kelly, a twenty-six year old Aussie who had moved into our place having already been in Japan for a year. He had a small squeaky Japanese girlfriend who would come round two or three evenings a week and generally get in the way. The place wasn’t big enough for three, let alone four people. It was in these conditions I met Aki and I was absolutely determined to make it work with her. In that determination I turned a blind eye to our suitability to each other and just fed off the non-lonely buzz the relationship gave me; gave us. Her single apartment was a sanctuary from my cluttered flat but it all happened to quickly. After our first night in the same bed a panic hit me and wouldn’t go away for three or four weeks. I still can’t quite explain it but I think it was a snowball effect: the first sign of my panic made me think “oh no! I’m going to ruin this relationship. She’s going to leave me because I’m just a ball of stress” which made me panic more. My base fear was that she’d leave me and I’d be on my own again and would have to return to England as the guy who couldn’t deal with being in Japan. Simple put, as soon as we got together, I fell quickly in love and became terrified that she might leave me. She never did. Over time, things became inverted: I was more confident and more integrated into Japan, and ironically Aki helped that to happen. Aki became scared that I’d leave her and increasingly jealous of all my other friends, especially my female friends.
I met Aki at Nova, the private English conversation school I worked at. She was a student and it was a big no-no to even socialise with the ‘clients’, let alone date them. So that added to my fear: would someone find out? If she left me would and thought I was a bastard would she tell Nova? Would I get sacked? It was a secret I desperately wanted to tell everyone but I simply couldn’t, it drove me nuts and certainly added to my loneliness.
I met Maki about a year into the relationship. She was one of the reception staff at my branch of Nova and the immediate intensity of our genuine friendship was a feeling I hadn’t had for a long time. We saw each other lots but nothing happened. She actually lived with me for the last five months of my time in Japan along with Scott, a fellow teacher who needed a place to stay. Jon and Kelly had long since moved out, as had Anthony and Sam, their replacements with whom I did have a lot in common and life in my apartment was great.
Everyone at Nova thought me and Maki were a couple but we were both confused as to the true nature of our friendship. As my departure date grew nearer, I grew nearer to Maki and further from Aki, but not in that order. In the last few weeks before I left, me and Maki couldn’t see enough of each other. She had lived in London for two years as a student in the London College of Fashion and was planning to return in the summer to continue her studies, having taken a few years work in Japan to save up some money. We made a plan to live together in London. I would return to the UK in early May, find a flat, find a job and have things ready for her return. My letter to Maki confirmed how much I wanted to do this and above all, to be with her.
Aki is classically beautiful, slender, with a slightly wide face with gives her a very cute look, as well as beautiful. Her wavy shoulder-length dark brown hair compliments her face perfectly. She smiles easily and I was immediately attracted to the ease at which she spoke to people, whether it was in her first language or not. On out first date she described herself as a moody person and a faithful person. She lived up to her self-analysis but was also incredibly in need of affection, unlike anyone else I’d met. Many times I was reminded of how fiercely ‘Japanese’ she was: unable to express deep-rooted emotions, practical, organised, unable to just let go, and very domesticated.
Maki is eight years younger, shorter, less concerned about her weight, cute, with a round face and sexy over-one-eye thick black hair, long at the front and shorter around her head. She allowed her time in the UK to compliment her characteristics and embraced the chance to break out of her Japanese culture. Her ability to look at Japan from an outsider’s point of view allows her to understand my view of Japan. Aki and Maki are both incredibly kind, as many Japanese people are.
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