Shattered dreams!

I’ve briefly mentioned “Mr Inspirational” on here before, the student who I wouldn’t mind a roll in the sack with, despite him being a lot shorter than me, a lot older than me, and with really very little conventional attractive features. His personality, way of thinking and maybe… sense of humour… Attracted me more than anything else, and when I accepted an invitation to go with him to a play and then drinking after, I thought it might actually be a bit dangerous, well, not that dangerous, it wasn’t just the two of us or anything, we were going with a group of his company’s interns that I’d been teaching English as well, but I thought I might get an even bigger crush on him or do something stupid when I was drunk.

Luckily for all parties involved, I’ve gone off him quite a bit!

I don’t think I’ve ever changed my opinion of someone so quickly, but then again, I’ve also never known someone to change their whole personality so much either. It’s going to be really hard to explain… It’s like when he speaks English, he’s one person, and then in Japanese another, but it may also have been to do with the fact that he was the “company president” when he was speaking Japanese and usually he’s just a dude I chat to in English.

The night started off shaky, to start with, as I was going out the door, Ryota said “Have fun escorting!” And I didn’t have time to protest that cheeky comment, but then I really thought about and hoped that wasn’t how it looked to everyone. I’d just never seen it in that light, I got offered free tickets to a play and I love the theatre but rarely get to go anymore and then free nosh and beer, come on, who would say no? But then again, if I’d thought about it harder and had been able to get past the images of the cold amber liquid running down my throat then I might have turned him down, nobody likes to be the gaijin trophy, not when you’ve been in Japan long enough anyway.

The next thing that should have indicated it wasn’t a good idea to go, was the fact that I got lost and ended up being horribly late. Can I just say, NOTHING stresses me out more than being late, if we make an arrangement to meet at 7, guaranteed I’ll be there at 6:30, it must be incredibly annoying for Ryota, I always tell him things are half an hour earlier than they really are just to make sure we’re not late. I especially hate being late in Japan, where gaijins are famous for being tardy compared to the Japanese, although I can say with certainty that I will always beat my J-friends to the meeting spot, to their amazement. So as I was getting further and further lost in the underground maze that is Osaka station, I swallowed my pride and called Mr Inspirational, who couldn’t really help me much and I had to pretty much navigate my way by asking random people for directions, (OK, I say random, but I actually chose young, hot guys so it was a little bit fun!) I finally made it but the show had already started, luckily, we had balcony seats so I didn’t have to climb over a million laps to get to my seat or anything.

I really enjoyed the play, it wasn’t brilliant or anything, but I laughed and cried so it must have been pretty good. At the end of it the actors did a little introduction and thank you for coming bit and asked Mr Inspirational to come up on stage, I guess he’s a sponsor or something, I actually have no idea. It was at this point that I started to go off him, his fakeness was very well pulled off and I’m sure that nobody even noticed it but I always see him being natural and not trying to impress anyone so it was just a bit off-putting as he shook hands and made a little speech that sounded like a totally different person. But still, a job is a job right, surely he’d relax at the drinking party afterwards?

Nope, he was so much the typical “shacho” (President) that it was sickening, he assigned seats and made sure he was surrounded by women, put the quiet interns far away and just generally started bossing everyone around. Now for his interns, he is their boss, so fair enough, but I just didn’t like the tone he was using. He was also barking orders at the staff and telling them to hurry the fuck up every 2 minutes, which I’m all for if it’s shitty service, but it was a Saturday night and they were doing the best they could, it really seemed like he just wanted everyone to know he was the alpha male.
I decided to try and cloud my growing distaste for him by drinking up, but I also had that horrible thought in the back of my mind that if I drank too much then I was likely to say something to him and really fuck things up so decided to hold back a little bit to keep my senses about me. Although this is almost impossible at a J-drinking party, you have absolutely no control over your own drink, every other fucker is always filling it up, my best advice, leave your glass full for as long as possible if you don’t want to get too drunk, otherwise as soon as you take a sip every bastard will be grabbing for it to fill it to the brim again!

Anyway, back to Mr Inspirational/Mr Cock Jockey... So he got worse as he got more and more drunk and started taking the piss out of all his interns, which I have to admit are a goofy bunch, but that’s a story for another day. He made them all answer questions, going around the table and putting them all on the spot, poor things, I felt so sorry for some of them, especially the nerdy kid who does some martial art, he made him get up and demonstrate to us all with his umbrella! He also seemed to say everything from a script, with the women around him (excluding me) playing up to him by giggling and agreeing with every word he said. I hate this shit, if it’s funny- laugh, if you’re just being polite, then maybe smile or give a token chuckle, but don’t act as if you’ve just heard the funniest thing on earth when it clearly isn’t that funny. I guess this goes much deeper in to the world of women in Japan making men feel significant but listening to them and laughing at their jokes and lighting their ciggies and stuff, but it just makes me want to vomit in to my handbag when I see it.

So despite trying to limit the glass filling shenanigans I was quite tipsy by the time I left the izakaya and actually felt quite relieved that Mr Inspirational had repulsed me, it gave me hope for the future of my marriage! (which has been quite good lately by some miracle, just in case you were wondering)

Right, off to the beach tomorrow so best get all the shite together that one needs to go to the beach with a 2 year old and a useless 29 year old! Well, not all useless he will be doing the 3 hour drive there! Happy weekend all!