About Mary and Takeshi - how we met

Mary and Takeshi are characters from the Japanese textbook "Genki." Mary is an exchange student from Arizona, and Takeshi is a student at the Japanese university where she is studying. They meet one fateful afternoon when Mary bravely goes up to Takeshi, clearly in awe of his mysterious good looks, and asks him what time it is. Takeshi, in true samurai honor, responds that it's 12:30, and proceeds to ask Mary where she's from, and her major. They then passionately kiss and consummate their love right there on the campus lawn.

As for me and my "Takeshi," we had a somewhat similar beginning. I was also an exchange student in Japan from the U.S. when I met Takeshi. He was a student as well, but not at my school. A friend of mine from my school was also studying in Japan, and met Takeshi on a train. Takeshi is a real backpacker, and was coming back from a trip to the Middle East. He was hairy, dirty, and reading an English book. My friend thought he may be Japanese-American or Canadian, and struck up a conversation. They talked, and exchanged numbers. A few days later I invited my friend to go out clubbing with some other exchange students, and he invited Takeshi. Although I was slightly tipsy when I met him, I can still remember very clearly the first time I laid eyes on him. I was standing in a stairwell to the subway station, and he was coming from the top (street level). Whenever I ask Takeshi about it, he has a very similar memory. He remembers me standing next to our friend and another American girl (a very very pretty girl who 9 times out of 10 would be the first person noticed), but he only looked at me. We talked, danced, and kissed.

As romantic as that sounds, it was at a sketchy dance club in Roppongi, one of the sketchiest districts of Tokyo. And the worst part of it was - I had a boyfriend at the time. My boyfriend and I had been together for awhile, but we just weren't working out anymore. I think I knew we should break up, and was coming more and more to the realization that we just weren't right for each other, but it wasn't until I met Takeshi that all my thoughts and feelings even manifested and came to the surface. It was rough, and my boyfriend took it pretty hard. He was actually coming to Japan in a few months to spend the summer with me, and it was too late for him to back out.

Yeah, I suck. Even now I hate how it all went down. But seeing as how Takeshi and I are just so right for each other, and are now happily married, I wouldn't change THAT it happened, just HOW it happened.

So Takeshi and I began our whirlwind romance among this drama, the back talking from mutual friends, and the destruction of my old relationship. But if everything came easy, it wouldn't be nearly as meaningful.

Hajimemashite

As the world gets smaller and more connected everyday, it's hard to imagine yourself being alone in a situation anymore. When something changes in your life, you can always just google it and find hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people who have been in your shoes. I've gotten so used to just googling my problems to find sources of comfort and explanation that I've forgotten what it's like to be unique anymore.

Not that my situation is all that unique. I guess it's just not as documented as I had hoped it was this week when I really needed to read about people who may or may not be able to give me some insight on what I'm feeling and why. So I've found myself a niche in the blogging world, and I've decided to give it a try. Even if it doesn't help answer my questions, hopefully someone will come across it someday when they need to know that someone has been in their shoes before.

Wow, this opening seems so dramatic and depressing! My "situation" is neither - it's wonderful, actually. I am an American woman, married to a Japanese man. We met almost four years ago, and have been married about a year and a half.

I guess I started searching for someone else who may have already started a blog about married couples like us when my husband kept referring to all these message boards and websites with information for Japanese people married to Americans. All the information on those sites is in Japanese, and is to meant to help Japanese spouses understand American culture and customs, but is of little use to Americans who already recognize they way they do things (hopefully!). When I tried to find sources for Americans about international couples, it didn't help that what I really wanted was information on Japanese-American couples. And when I searched specifically for those, I found message boards with American men bragging about how much hotter/skinnier/more domestic and all around better their Japanese wives were than American women. Yes, good for you - your wife cooks for you AND gives you blow job every night! But that's not exactly what I'm looking for in relationship advice.

Basically, when my husband and I don't see eye-to-eye on something, we often just shrug it off as a cultural difference, despite our extensive experience in both Japan and the U.S. It's almost a scapegoat now : "What honey? You're upset that I lent money to my friend without telling you? It's not MY fault - I'm Japanese!" It's getting harder to tell what are just our differences in personalities, and what're our differences in culture.

And so, the blog. I hope to write about the real us - our ups and downs, our revelations, our dreams, our darkest hours. I hope to be a source for other women like me, who are looking for people that have been in their shoes and can offer some perspective. Names, and perhaps some dates and places, will be changed, but the stories will be real.

Yoroshiku!