Jun.

Jun: pronounced like June.

I talked to the family this weekend and there were a lot of questions floating around about this new girl I've been dating, so I'll try to resolve some of those questions here (I'm looking your way, Mom).

We met at a couchsurfing hanami party in Shinjuku. It was the first warm day of the year, really beautiful. I don't believe we actually talked at the party, but there was a small after-party party in another park in Shibuya with about 5 of us. Even here, we didn't talk directly to each other a lot, but I was definitely attracted to her right off the bat. However, I was still, at this point, in not-really-looking-for-dating mode, and I was quite detached from the opposite sex. Fortunately, about a week later, I had an incident that made me realize that it might not be such a good idea for me to remain closed in this way, and I asked her out shortly thereafter. She said yes, although she tells me that she wasn't particularly considering it a date. I'm apparently sneaky about the dating.

OK, so enough with the background. Here's the pertinent info...

She's Japanese. She lived in Canada for a number of years and reads, writes, and speaks English, and regularly asserts that she is more Canadian than Japanese, although she *is* quite Japanese in many ways, as well...just not her overall attitude and outlook on life, if there can be said to be a single "Japanese" perspective. I don't think that there can, personally, but she's definitely on the fringes of the bell curve.

She works for a TV company in Japan. She likes drinking and swearing inappropriately in English, despite the fact that she is stylish, cultured, well-read, very well-traveled, and self-possessed. Anyone who knows me is aware of my predilection for contradictions, so this habit of swearing that she has is particularly endearing. She apparently has an eye for contradiction as well, because I can hardly be described as stylish, although I am aware that there is something about my physical presence that makes up, to some extent, for my minimal attention to the fine art of dressing oneself appropriately.

She's older than I am. She's beautiful. When we go out, people stare and stare and stare. Even as used to being looked at as I am, now, it's still a little disconcerting to see how intently we provoke others' interest when we're together. I don't get the sense that it's particularly hostile, but it's weird, nonetheless. I don't have a real sense of what they're thinking. Perhaps we just make a striking couple. I'm big in the states, but I'm fucking huge here...she's not a tall woman, despite her constant cheating with tall shoes, so maybe it's the size difference or something. I don't know.

Anyway, it's been really nice. In fact, I think it's fair to say that our time together has been, by far, the most fun that I've had in Tokyo.

So...thank you, Jun. You've greatly enhanced my life in a very short time.