"Wow, white people really ARE white!"

One evening, on the interminable train ride back to deepest Yokohama after another day as a Canon intern, I noticed an attractive young woman standing by the door looking at me. She was remarkable not just because she was attractive, but especially because she did not turn away and avoid eye contact when I looked at her. Lingering eye-contact with a strange member of the opposite sex was not common in Tokyo and this was the first time I had ever experienced it.

When the train was approaching Fujigaoka Station, I decided to venture closer and see what happened. She did not shy away. Instead, she asked me a one-word question, "Fujigaoka?" I responded: "Fujigaoka." Then I asked her, "Fujigaoka?," and she answered "Aobadai," the name of the next station.

I responded in Japanese, "That's too bad." Her eyes widened. "You speak Japanese?" I told her I did. The train pulled into Fujigaoka Station and the doors opened. I stepped off. So did she.

I suggested that we go to the only place that Fujigaoka had to offer, Mr. Donut. We walked across the square from the station, got our coffees, and found an isolated table on the second floor to sit and talk. She told me her name was Emu, she was 19, and I was the first foreigner she had ever spoken to.

In Japanese, the word for "caucasian" is hakujin, literally meaning "white person." Growing up in the American racial milieu, I had never thought of white people as being actually white, any more than I thought of black people being black or Asian people being yellow. These were all descriptive shortcuts in my mind. But as Emu and I were getting to know each other at the Fujigaoka Mr. Donut, she looked down at my hand and suddenly exclaimed, "Hontou ni shiroinda!" -- "Wow, [white people] really ARE white!" -- as if she had never really believed it to be true, but now the indisputable facts were staring her in the face.

I could have been offended, but I didn't care what she called me. I was already smitten.

On the next Saturday, we had a date, in Shibuya. The date was going amazingly well until, late in the afternoon, in a coffee shop ironically named "Emu," I asked a question I never should have asked: Did she have a boyfriend?

I asked this question because, just before coming to Japan, I had suffered a terrible heartbreak. My long-distance girlfriend had become involved with a male "friend" -- who had pursued her aggressively from the start knowing she had a boyfriend. I had watched all this happen, in slow-motion, at long-distance, powerless to do anything about it. And, yet, I stuck around and watched it happen.

I did not actually suspect that Emu had a boyfriend. I was just covering the bases. Given my recent experience, I wanted to clear any doubts from my mind before I got in any deeper. And when she told me she did, I was shocked -- actually heartbroken, even though I'd only known her for a couple of days. I asked where he was, and she told me he was away at tennis camp. Still angry at my ex-girlfriend (for whom Emu was now a stand-in), and feeling a misplaced need to protect her boyfriend (who was now a stand-in for me), I launched into a lecture about how she shouldn't go around giving men the wrong impression that she was available when she wasn't . . . .

A week later, I called Emu, still hoping I could see her. She answered the phone, but pretended to be her sister and said she wasn't home. I asked her to tell "Emu" to call me when she got in, but I never heard from her again. I am sure that I had hurt and completely embarassed her with my unsolicited and unnecessary criticism.

Of course, I eventually realized how badly I had screwed up. She was probably genuinely interested, and who knows how serious she really was with her boyfriend? Plus, many Japanese women, particularly at that age, considered themselves free agents until marriage and were always looking for someone better-looking, more fun, richer, sexier until they found "the one." Had I kept my mouth shut -- even after learning about the boyfriend -- he might have become history. During my first three-year stay in Japan, I dated several other women, but I never met another one like Emu.

(Good thing, too, as it turned out. Hi, Honey! I love you!)