after the rain

pat left exactly 2 weeks ago, on sunday, and now that he's gone it's like he was never here to begin with. but at the same time having him here felt so natural that i kept forgetting he was only here for a visit.

man oh man did we have a good time. i did, at least. i can't speak for him of course. but i have a suspicion that he had equally as much fun as i did. at first he seemed... not uncomfortable, but definitely like he was testing the waters. eventually he held my hand and actually kissed me once or twice. but most importantly we laughed a lot. except that one night, but i'll get to that later.

backing up... pat and i exchanged christmas presents right off the bat. i got pat a pen drive/mp3 player. in japan they're called USB players so i had to do some research just to find out what they're called. the last time i checked they weren't quite "popular" yet in japan and were still fairly expensive, so i wasn't surprised when i found out that they're only available online here in the states.

pat got me suikoden iv. we started playing it together as pat promised we would. i haven't checked recently but i think we got about 15 hours in.

i haven't played it since he left.

3 things about suikoden iv, and items 1 and 2 are a catch-22:

1. while you're cruising around on the world map you get into a ridiculous number of battles. it's just unnecessary. but on the plus side you never have to worry about leveling up.

2. the distance between islands is unreasonable, and before you recruit viki you actually have to sail the whole way there, which can easily take over 30 minutes depending on how many enemies you encounter.

3. the hero's best friend, snowe, is a jackass. in suikoden ii jowy was an all-around nice guy with whom you could actually sympathize. snowe is just a fuck-up. i am looking forward to the final showdown.

with all the free time pat and i had sailing between islands we had a lot of time to talk and joke around about the game. at one point the only 3 items in one of our inventories were diamonds, platinum, and skin (pat, you had to know i'd bring this up). which of these doesn't belong? anyway, so pat made a joke about making a weapon out of diamonds, platinum, and skin, and for like an hour everything had to do with skin. my favorite part was when pat said, "blah blah blah skin." i even set it as the banner on his cellphone. i don't know, you had to be there.

we watched 4 movies, 2 of which were in theaters. we rented napoleon dynamite and the terminal, and saw ocean's 12 and assault on precinct 13 on the big screen. all of them were exceptionally well done except for assault on precinct 13, but you can't expect much from an action movie.

most mornings i dropped my parents off at work, came home, and slept for another hour in the same bed as pat.

usually whenever we'd drive somewhere neither of us would say anything, and it was okay. on the phone i feel like i have to keep the conversation going, since i'm the one paying for the long-distance bills.

i think both of us had been expecting to have sex at some point during the visit, but it never happened. i did get to see him naked though.

so anyway, one night we were hanging out in my room and it hit me that this could be the last time i ever see pat again. i started crying and it all went downhill from there. i asked him if it were possible that the reason he's torn between whether or not he wants to date me again is just him not wanting to say goodbye. but as it turns out he didn't know that if he doesn't come back (to me, not minnesota), we can't be friends anymore. at least not for another 2 years. however long it takes for me to completely get over him.

i don't want to get into it too much, but basically i asked a lot of questions and pat answered them to the best of his ability. both of us expected him to decide after seeing me again, but he didn't. he still doesn't know how he feels about me. he needs more time.

it was painful to talk about but in a way i'm glad we did. after that pat absolutely refused to be in my room with me alone for fear that i'd bring it up again. what i didn't tell him is that i don't want to ever, ever have to ask him if he loves me again, and that i won't until june, if that's how long it takes. i didn't tell him because it didn't matter.

i asked him what he used to love about me, and without hesitation he replied that it was how he could talk to me about anything. which is interesting, because i don't feel like i can be completely honest with him, either. like, this morning i woke up feeling completely hopeless about everything and i missed him so badly i couldn't stand it, and even though i don't often feel that way i would never bring it up in a phone conversation. and maybe i should. it is unpleasant to hear about but if he wanted to be entertained he wouldn't gave called me in the first place.

before pat moved back to california i could tell he was still in love with me just by the way he touched me, but i didn't feel it as strongly this time. i did feel like our friendship was stronger, however. before it was like we didn't know how to act around each other.

i am trying not to get my hopes up and to not give up hope entirely, and it's hard. it's hard being so in love with someone who isn't sure how they feel about you. especially when they did love you once. when they called you theirs a couple of months ago and practically promised to come back.

i want to believe that everything will be okay. we've almost gone our separate ways 4 times now, but somehow we found each other again and everything worked out.

i was determined not to cry at the airport. we went out to eat beforehand at sakura because i was craving japanese, and jen just happened to be sitting at the next table. i could tell the waitress was japanese so halfway through the meal i called out, "excuse me, could i please have some water?" in japanese and she did a double-take. i wouldn't have said anything to her in japanese had pat not encouraged me to do so. it turned out to be a good idea. she kept repeating how surprised and happy she was.

i asked her how she liked minnesota and she didn't say anything at first. "well, i just moved here last summer. i used to live in chicago." hah. anyway, apparently there's a larger japanese community in chicago than in minnesota (surprise surprise), so it wasn't really necessary for her to learn english until she moved here.

we talked about other things, too. she said she used to live near tokyo. i said i lived in kobe. she said she'd never visited the kansai region, which means kyoto, nara, osaka, kobe, hiroshima, etc. etc. how can you have never been to kansai? i'm really struggling to keep from using multiple question marks. it's just that outrageous.

pat and i got to the airport at 7:45. pat's plane wasn't scheduled to take off until 9:30 so we hung out at the terminal for an hour. i don't remember what we talked about but i do remember sharing a snickers bar, holding hands, and laughing a lot. i remember thinking, "this is how i want him to remember me."

when it was time for him to go i hugged him tightly and told him to let me come visit him in california on his 21st birthday. i told him i'd miss him, and he said he'd miss me too. then i let him go and he started to leave, but i called him back, and i said, "i love you." and he said, "i love you too." pause. and then he said, "i think. habit." and i was not in the least upset about it because i knew he didn't mean it. because it was still nice to hear. i let him go again and this time he left. i watched him go through security and waved one last time before i couldn't see him anymore and i didn't cry, not until i got out to my car. but even then it didn't last long. i've cried over him so many times that now it's practically impossible.

and now he's gone, and it's like he was never even here.

i miss him. i miss him even more than i did before. most mornings i wake up and i don't even want to get out of bed, but once i do i feel better. stand up straight, shoulders back, smile. and i'm not pretending this time.

i actually like school. from grade 5 up until last year i absolutely hated school and faked being sick on a somewhat regular basis to get out of going. now it's my friends who can hardly wait to graduate. then again, they already have colleges picked out whereas i don't. i've looked at 2 colleges in california so far and 0 in minnesota (if pat doesn't come back i'll probably just go to college here - boo hiss).

i only have 2 "real" classes this year - a.p. bio and a.p. lit. i'm taking 3 independent studies in photography, japanese, and grammar, plus band and a relaxed study. for the first time in my entire high school career all of my homework is getting done on time, i'm striking up conversations with random people i've never met before, and best of all i'm having fun.

oh, and my parents bought me a car yesterday. well, technically it's not "my" car. it's under my parents' names. if i were employed right now my parents could've signed it under my name and i would've officially had my first car. le sigh.

it's a 2005 ford focus.

i redecorated my entire bedroom with the help of di's mom.

it was awkward bringing up di's mom in front of di because everything i said sounded like a "your mom" joke.

anyway, i started almost exactly a week before pat got here. my mom didn't think i could do it, but i was determined to have it ready for pat, and i did it. the walls are a deep shade of red and i have a bamboo screen set up as my headboard and bamboo reed blinds.

and now, as promised...

sunday, may 30, 2004

moegi had promised me like weeks before that we'd see troy in theaters on sunday but she ended up bailing out on me because she had too much homework.

since i didn't have anything else to do i went grocery shopping with my host mother. more often than not i'd go shopping with my host parents because it was my only chance to get out of the house on weekends.

on the way back from the grocery store i bought blue apple flavored shaved ice. if you're wondering what a blue apple looks like it was actually green. the japanese often call things blue that would normally be perceived as green in the west, like stop lights. it's not that they actually think stop lights are blue, it's just that stop lights have always been blue, so why unnecessarily complicate things? once i asked my host mother (at the hiratos, not the tanakas) how anybody could think a stop light is blue in the first place, and she thinks it's because of the ocean. everybody knows the ocean is blue, but in actuality the ocean isn't always blue. during certain times of the year it's green (apparently). thus, at one time in japan there was a fine line between green and blue. it makes sense.

i chatted with pat online and then my host father took me to a video rental store so i could rent twilight samurai, a japanese movie my mom had recommended to me. as it turned out they didn't have twilight samurai with english subtitles. they didn't have ringu either. by that time an employee had already combed the store to find what i was looking for, so i just gave up and told my host father i wanted to go home.

the rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, studying, and reading. my host father surprised me with ame agaru, a film directed by takashi koizumi. better known in english as after the rain or when the rain lifts, ame agaru was based on akira kurosawa's last script written shortly before his death in 1998.

i enjoyed it a great deal. like many japanese movies, ame agaru's plot is very slow-moving compared to your typical american movie. if that's not your cup of tea you should probably pass this one up.

as far as i know moegi did not step out of her room once all day, except for dinner. she looked exhausted and hardly touched her dinner. she said her head hurt.

no kidding.

p.s. i got this from resa and jackie's livejournals and i'm curious as to whether or not anybody would actually do it (pat, if you'd do this it would totally make my day since you haven't left a comment on my diary in over 2 years).

Memories:

If you read this,
Even if I don't speak to you often,
You must (change that to "may, if you wish") post a memory of me.

It can be anything you want,
It can be good or bad,
Just so long as it happened.

(if you don't know me in person and you want to make up a memory of something you and i have done together, go right ahead.)

Then post this to your journal. See what people remember about you.