Just not cricket

What a rollercoaster of emotions this week has been. On Saturday night, I drank my way through the England match - enjoying the rowdy, mispronounced singing and misplaced enthusiasm from the Japanese fans watching far more than the game itself. Did anyone else think it was a bit boring? I did meet a hilarious boy called Taka, (I can`t say why he`s hilarious, I just remember laughing a lot while he was around), who has inspired me to learn how to say `he laughs like a donkey` in Japanese. Useful, ne? I initially thought he was Jery`s younger brother, but when I sobered up, realised this was a failed joke.

Sunday I went on a wash-out of a date with a guy from Cafe Lamp. I was extremely tired and hung over, which was not a good start, and rainy season had begun. Possibly. One Japanese person will tell me it`s rainy season, but then when I say it to someone else, they say the opposite - ad infinitum. For people who hate confrontation and argument, they can be bloody awkward. We went to Yokohama, but being Japanese, he put us on the wrong train, so it took half the day to make an hour-long journey, then tried to get me on a big wheel, despite my claiming many times that I don`t like heights (they act as cheap love hotels and teenagers go in the London Eye-like capsules to neck for 30 minutes). I was fairly confident I wouldn`t be scared, but didn`t want to risk any improper behaviour. He`s really not my type and I haven`t got to the chapter on knock-backs in my Japanese book yet. I finally managed to avoid the big wheel as the boats to Yokohama`s China Town stopped running early and we didn`t have time to do both. He rather sweetly offered to pay my fare, which amounted to a couple of quid. Then we wandered around the soaked streets trying to find an affordable, nice restaurant. The Japanese technique for choosing seems to be to follow the masses, rather than branching out and trying somewhere that looks good and undiscovered, so we ended up in a very cheap, busy place that looked to me like the Chinese equivalent of a trucker`s cafe. Apparently it`s traditional for men to pay on the first date (when they know it`s a date, last time, we went ambiguously Dutch), but Mamoru`s job is incredibly badly paid, so he paid ￥4000 and I ￥2000. It was quite fun, but totally unromantic and all his plans failed. Aside from the big wheel and the poorly plotted journey, everywhere sold tofu, which I stupidly announced I hate and we missed the cinema. However, he did teach me a brilliant bit of Japanese slang. Apparently the police are called `public dogs`, a phrase I think should be spread in Britain, too. Please use it.

I`ve also had more issues with Omiya Men`s Club. I invited a new member round to my flat on Tuesday to check out my single female Japanese friends, thinking he and Yukako would hit it off. They did and snogged in my flat, but I was so drunk I didn`t actually notice. Last week he announced, as though it was a fact, that Western women are not attractive. In my opinion, conceited dwarves are also not attractive, but I know some people have unusual fetishes so would not brandish my opinion as a wholly undeniable truth. This week, I caught him trying to butter up the Japanese girls by saying he doesn`t like Western women because they have opinions. I certainly have one on him...

It is not just this one. Before I came to Japan, I was prepared to encounter a bit of sexiam from the locals, this not being a particularly progressive country socially. It`s practically Stepford circa 1972 - they suffer from almost every `ism` imaginable and are not in the least bit ashamed of it. In fact, the Japanese people I have encountered, generally seem unaware that these are viewed as faults by outsiders. I thought I`d find it quite tough as a woman because here everything I perceive as a quality in myself is regarded as unnecessary, or even ugly. Personality is most definitely not ranked highly and the best way to shine is to reapply your lipgloss. But it`s my colleagues that are the bain of my life. Some are so ridiculously old school it is obvious why they`ve had to come to Japan. Britain is way too progressive. I`ve never been overly aware of my own gender before, but here I feel branded. While discussing my current situation of practically having no gaijin to confide in (Japanese girls only talk about getting boyfriends - I am a `How To` guide, not a friend) I was told that men don`t feel comfortable spending too much time alone with a woman (why?!) and that after spending all their time with their girlfriends, I shouldn`t expect to get too many invites out as the other teachers want `men-only` nights. I sort of understand this mentality, but find it absurd and offensive and it leaves me lurking around the George on my own. Thank god I have met a sensible group of Australian Nova teachers to hang out with. (Not a sentence I previously imagined I`d find myself saying).

Monday night, I went to watch the Japan game with some of the Nova teachers and some of their Japanese girlfriends. One had a complete fit when Australia scored and eventually had to hide in her boyfriend`s bedroom crying. Chotto excessive, perhaps. I got to practise my stumbling Japanese on the girlfriends, but speak a garbled mix of Janglish, plotting a basic sentence structure in Japanese and filling in the hard bits with English. I think they understood. One had just recorded an advert for Nova and seemed quite good, but you can never be completely sure if you are understood as a standard response to anything is smiling and nodding. Obviously, everyone here is now gutted at the defeat. The build-up to the start of the World Cup seemed bigger than in England, with far more enthusiasm, unless I just less attention back home. It`s been fun winding up my students about it though.

On Tuesday night, the Japanese girls came round for more advice on how to date gaijin they don`t fancy. Yukako thinks her boyfriend is `strange` and Kaori doesn`t like the guy she is asking out, although I once referred to him as cute, so I think I have inadvertantly given him the stamp of approval. Not exactly ideal, considering I might have wanted him for myself. They are hilarious though. Yukako appalled the others by announcing that sex is her `hobby` and later asked Kaori to join her in a threesome with Kaori`s stalkee, Graeme the JET. Kaori, of course, refused, but I have since learned the Japanese for threesome. My vocabulary is growing and growing.

My students have been amusing me this week. One of my kindergarten students, a four-year-old lunatic called Maica, was shouting the Japanese for `tits` on Saturday, and also the word for `can`, but I couldn`t understand what it was she could do. Sachiko and Hidako, after plotting my date with Mamoru last week, told me that he was not good enough because he doesn`t have prospects and were horrified when I explained that dating here is only fun and prospects don`t matter as I am never going to marry a Japanese man and live here. I think they were hoping that they`d never have to deal with getting a new teacher by shacking me up with a salaried ball and chain. Sachiko asked me to `hear` her life story as an example of how love should work (or a man should work, love rarely seems to be involved) and then asked Hidako to follow suit. Hidako`s English isn`t so good spontaneously, but something was said about a second love and a baby. At first I thought she meant her husband had a girlfriend before she met him and she stole him away, but it turned out that while they were married, he had an affair, at which time she became pregnant and threatened to leave him, so he had to ditch the mistress. I am not sure how this was supposed to convince me to marry a Japanese man.