[Do I need to update my PHP? Probably. I'll just add that to the list of things I'll never do. I've still got an account on Ello and haven't gotten around to shutting that down yet.]
I’m standing outside a Buddhist temple in Kyoto with sweat rolling down my forehead. It’s subtropical in southern Honshu in August and I hadn’t quite factored this in. My mother made me pack a coat; I’m not sure she did either.
Heat or no heat, I’ve been enjoying myself. We spent a whole week in Tokyo buying retro games and drinking the VERY MANLY pink peach froth they do in Japanese Starbucks. The occasional diversion to maid cafés, a stripshow and possibly-the-biggest-sex-shop-in-the-world aside, our first week had mostly consisted of going to various places to shop.
And I was completely fine with that. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t there for that, too.
Kyoto is proving different. Walk down the street from our hotel and lots of the suburban houses have a little Shinto hokora sandwiched between them. Eventually you’ll reach the local onsen, which we’ve already been to. I’ve never been naked in front of 47 before. He’s practically my brother and we had to go to Japan to reach that step. He didn’t seem fazed by my UNUSUALLY LARGE PENIS.
Anyway. We’ve just had a rickshaw ride through a forest of bamboo and there’s a large Buddhist ex-monastery now used as a temple of worship and/or tourist trap. We are tourists and have fallen into said trap. 47, who (as it turns out) is a competent photographer, is quite keen on taking pictures. My DM forbids me from taking anything not at a Batman angle. He’s got the ‘phone and he’s taking the snaps.
I stand in front of the path to the temple and strike a pose.
“Kawaii!” says a cute female voice.
I look in its direction and see the cute female attached to said voice. She was walking down the road with a group of other Japanese women holding parasols, but she’s stopped now to call something kawaii. And she’s looking straight at me. She then repeats it again – “so kawaii!!”
This must be a mistake. Or a joke, or a dare. Maybe 47 has paid her to tell me I’m kawaii. Of course, perhaps she genuinely does think I’m kawaii, or at least the pose I’ve chosen to strike is kawaii. Perhaps it’s the T-shirt I’m wearing, or my messy black hair, or how awkward I look. Japanese friends have occasionally spoken of the appeal of an innocent-looking gaijin. (Whether or not I’m actually innocent is, of course, conjecture, but it’s in my screen name, so I’ll take it.)
Of course, maybe I’m not kawaii. Maybe she was saying kawaikunai – かわいくない – and I’m not cute.
She must have picked up on my sudden self-doubt because she switches to English.
“Cutie!” she clarifies, with a smile brighter than the surface of Venus. “You’re a cutiecutie!”
OK, that’s new. I’ve never been called a cutiecutie before. My mum called me handsome once. A girl at a gig said I was very pretty. A staff member at Rebecca’s college once said I was “a bit of a honey” and one of Soldiergirl’s friends said I “looked like an angel”. But being a cutiecutie was new. Being declared one immediately after being told I was kawaii twice was definitely new. And being told so by a pretty Japanese girl is basically the sort of thing I’ve had dreams about.
After this, you know, take me away. I’m done. It’s not going to get any better than this.
She gets a grin and an arigatoo in response and bounces away riding her own smile. 47 takes his snap and we start to make our slow, sweaty way down the path.
“I’m kawaii, apparently,” I say under my breath.
“You are!” says 47, with some finality to it.
I don’t stop smiling for about a day and a half.
