GAIJIN WATCH: FOREIGNER SEEKS WIFE

It’s no secret that many Western men are drawn to Japan due to yellow fever. It’s understandable as normal turn-offs for the ladies back home — such as pasty white skin, social awkwardness, obsessions with female comic-book characters — can actually improve your chances here. Tapping some Far East booty is fairly easy, even if you don’t speak the language. During pre-intercourse courtship you can get by with drunken inarticulates and post-coital conversation can be limited to either “Sex! Good!” and a thumbs-up or making animal noises to cover the awkward, unsatisfied silences. I assumed that for single Western men the allure of Japan was mainly sex, until the day I met Billy.

At first glance I had him pegged as a big, brash American frat-boy but on closer inspection I learned he was Canadian. But beneath Billy’s puka shell necklaces, muscular physique and ill-crafted innuendos, was a soul yearning for something deeper. A sadness pervaded his well-being. This observation came to me after spying him dry-hump a wall, alone, in the corner of a karaoke bar but became much more apparent months later — all thanks to a chance encounter at a bus station.

I hadn’t seen Billy for a while since we first met. He was alone at the station, had grown a thick beard and was completely lost in thought. When I called his name he turned slowly and it took him a second to recognize me. He was, it turned out, preoccupied with one thing.

“So you’re leaving Japan this summer, huh? I’ll be here for another few years yet. I mean there’s only really one reason I’m here and that’s to get married. I want a Japanese wife, man, but right now it’s not going so well. I got a t-shirt made up saying “I love Japanese Girls” but even that didn’t seem to work. Yeah sure every Saturday night I’m cruising the town with my buddy and yeah sure we’re picking up chicks in bars but do they want to marry me? I don’t think so. Then take this other chick. A teacher in my Junior High. Man, I am sweet on her and I know she is on me but we just keep dancing around the issue, you know? The whole marriage issue. In class I can feel the energy but how do I win her heart? I’m asking you, please, how can I find a wife?”

Billy, by the way, is only 25 so the question took me a little off-guard. I was also a bit disturbed by the pleading, almost desperate look in his eye. Struggling for a response all I could say was “just keep wearing the t-shirt” to which he nodded and solemnly resumed his brooding. Lost in thought, he barely noticed when I had left.

Then, about a week ago, he called me.

“Keep this one under your hat but we – Akiko, my teacher and I – are heading to Nagano for the weekend to kind of, you know, test the waters. Oh, by the way, you can have my t-shirt if you want it.”

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