Kobe Meeting

Since we met the last time, Shoko and I were phoning each other all the time when we went back to our respective home towns. During our last conversation, we agreed to meet each other in her home town of Kobe.
This relaxed city is a thriving and bustling metropolis which has seemingly recovered majestically from the ruins of the devastating earthquake of 1995. It had all the qualities of a colourful and vibrant city but without the in-your-face culture of Tokyo or Osaka. It is a perfect place to stroll around whilst admiring the bargain shops and the wild array of restaurants.
Indeed, it's the restaurants and cafés which are the most visible attraction in Kobe. As soon as I exited Sanomiya Station and met Shoko, we were spoilt for choice as to where we should eat lunch. Thai, Russian, French, Jamaican and Mexican were just a few of the restaurants on offer to us.
We decided to eat at an Indian curry house because we both held the firm belief that Indian food is the best in the world. As we looked at the menu, I was hoping for a big helping of spicy ass-blasting curry, and we got it in spades. The first course consisted of spicy Nan bread. But this wasn't any old Nan bread. This was a mutant sized Nan which had the power to destroy man-kind. Our waiter's back was stooped by the weight as he carried it to our table on giant plates. It would have been better to cart it in a wagon.
He found it difficult to find space as he deposited the Nan plates on the table, so I opened the window nearest to me and allowed part of the Nan to flap about in the wind in order to accommodate it on the table.
During our meal, Shoko and I began to laugh when we reminisced about the Love Hotel in Osaka and my dubious pick of Tom Waits for 'mood' music. We agreed that it was a great night. This made her imminent departure to Hong Kong next month even more demoralising.
After eating one-sixteenth of the Godzilla-sized Nan, we were nearly full, so decided to order our main courses. I picked a spicy Vindaloo, partly because Japanese restaurants have a policy of immediately refilling your water once you finish. Without this reassurance, a red-hot vindaloo might have had the ability to destroy the foundations of my body and soul.
I was lucky that my glass was always refilled because the vindaloo this restaurant cooked up was so damn hot, that I was convinced it was made in Hell. The first mouthful I tasted nearly blew me off my chair. I had to hang on to the table for dear life as I ate my lunch. Shoko offered some of her milder curry, which I gladly accepted because I wanted to actually taste food and not to be aggressively attacked by it.
After finishing our meal, we went for a walk around Kobe and basked in the glow of the afternoon sunshine as it lit up the cosmopolitan city. Two hours later, we were both feeling peckish, so went to a nearby French café for a late afternoon supper. It was ferociously windy at this time of the day, so we were quite apprehensive about sitting outside due to the tables inside being occupied. The food looked so good that we decided to risk the uncomfortable gale-force winds ripping through the city. The food we ordered were crepes filled with strawberries, bananas, cream and chocolate. As expected, it was delicious. But, as expected, the wind was determined to ruin our eating experience. I lost count how many times I had to forcefully stab my fork into my food to stop it being whipped off my plate by the wind. Shoko found it difficult to eat because her long hair submerged her face as she sat in the direction of the wind. Naturally, we didn't have time to savour the food because it would have surely flew off into the Kobe streets if we hadn't shoved it down our gullets in a flash.
It was in these inhospitable weather conditions that Shoko decided to reveal some surprising news.
“Would you like the see my parents tonight?” she asked through her wind-swept hair.
“Er,” I said brilliantly.
“You don't have to. I just thought it would be nice for them to see who I've been hanging out with for the past few weeks.”
This comment was weighted with meaning. I suspected Shoko was a family girl judging by the amount of times she said she loved her parents. She was also living with them. Rejecting meeting her parents might mean rejecting Shoko, and I didn't want that. I wanted to meet her parents, but one issue plagued my mind.
“Do they speak English?” I asked.
“No,” Shoko replied.
“Ah.”
This new found information could have proved potentially hazardous. A meeting between non-English speaking parents and a non-Japanese speaking fool was no basis for enlightened discussions.
I voiced my fears to Shoko.
“Don't worry! Just smile and nod. They'll be happy with that,” Shoko said.
“Your parents are easy to please,” I said.
“Trust me, they're easy-going.”
I was reassured by this. If all I was to do was smile and nod to keep them happy, I was determined to make my smile the best they had ever seen. I practised my smile at the table using Shoko's make-up mirror.
“Don't be ridiculous,” Shoko said, snatching her mirror from my hands.
Shoko decided we should meet her parents at their apartment in the evening, leaving us a few hours to explore the city. Before we got up to leave the French restaurant she phoned her mother and explained the plan. After hanging-up, Shoko said that her parents were “very very very excited” about meeting me. With this much anticipation attached to me, I was sure I was going to drastically disappoint. Especially since all I was armed with was a smile and a nod.
After the crepes we went for another walk around the city, this time visiting Kobe's port, which explained the international feel of the city. The different cultures that sailed to this port must have had a lasting influence on the city's aesthetic and mentality. Indeed, there was so much international influence and very little Japanese. This became obvious when we searched for a Japanese restaurant when we became ravenously hungry. But the search for a restaurant proved fruitless. The options we had were Vietnamese, Nepalese, Indonesian, German, Spanish, Korean and Jamaican restaurants. I wanted to try a meal I had never eaten before, and I had never eaten Indonesian or Jamaican food. Shoko told me that Indonesian food was quite spicy, and I had already experienced spicy food earlier that day and I didn't want to meet Shoko's parents with my ass locked and loaded and ready to explode. With this in mind we picked the Jamaican restaurant.
Our shared meal of jerk chicken, rice, peas and shrimp was fantastic. We had no complaints about the food but the restaurant layout proved a problem. Shoko and I were seated next to a big screen TV screen showing footage of Burning Spear in concert, which was great because I love his reggae. The problem was that we were also seated next to the loud speakers, and trying to make conversation with Shoko whilst Winston Rodney passionately sang about the politics of Marcus Garvey wasn't the atmosphere I had hoped for.
During our meal Shoko sensed I was feeling nervous about meeting her parents, so she suggested we go for some karaoke to unwind before hand. I thought this was a good idea so we went to a karaoke bar nearby and belted out a number of tunes in a small booth which overlooked Kobe's cityscape at night. As much as I was enjoying duetting with Shoko, I made the fatal error of drinking three glasses of whiskey on the rocks. This had a ghastly effect on my brain which left me a stumbling mess. Upon observing my intoxicated behaviour, Shoko said she would not present me to her parents in my current state. With this in mind, she led me to the girls’ toilet and dunked my head into a sink of cold water to sober me up. Underneath the water I still managed to hear the shrill screams of women walking into the toilet and seeing what appeared to be a woman trying to drown a man in the sink. This brief drowning had an immediate effect on me because the shock of the ice cold water on my face made the alcohol lurking in my brain run away for dear life.
Shoko looked me up and down before concluding that I was fit for presentation. We then headed to her parents house.
Our taxi pulled up outside a house in an area that had been flattened by the earthquake in 1995. Shoko told me that her parent's house was one of the only ones left intact after the disaster. I nodded to this fact, but I couldn't really give a measured and mature answer because I was terrified about the meeting about to take place. I knew all eyes would be on me, with her parents judging whether I was suitable for their daughter.
Shoko rang the door bell, and whilst we waited she quickly rearranged my hair.
The door opened and revealed a small smiling woman.
“Oka-san!” Shoko said, hugging her mum.
“Kernichiwa Shoko,” her mother said in a soft voice.
Shoko broke away from her mum and positioned me in front of her.
“Mum, this is Sam,” she said.
I bowed and presented her with a box of chocolates I had bought earlier in the day.
“Arigato,” she said, bowing. I bowed in kind.
There was silence.
Shoko nudged me, indicating she wanted me to speak.
“Kernichiwa,” I said.
“Kernichiwa,” Shoko's mum said, and gave a delicate laugh whilst covering her mouth.
The extended silence that followed this exchange cemented the fact that I was one lazy bastard when it came to learning Japanese.
“Good!” I said whilst pointing to the interior of her compact and cosy house. “Good house.”
Shoko's mum covered her mouth and laughed again. Shoko and I went inside when her mum ushered us in. The house was simply designed with Japanese paintings adorning the walls. The smell of Nabe came from the nearby kitchen causing my stomach to rumble.
We entered the living room to find Shoko's dad sitting on a sofa watching a J-league football game on TV. He stood up to reveal his towering stature and shook my hand.
He must have been over six feet tall, and looking down on me he said, “Hello Mr. Sam.”
“Hello....Shoko's dad,” I said.
He offered me a seat, whilst Shoko and her mum attended to the Nabe in the kitchen.
I sat down next to him and we laughed. There was nothing funny to laugh about, but we realised we couldn't speak the others language so we needed to fill this language void to avoid any awkwardness. We continued to laugh about nothing for a few minutes, before we settled down and stared at the TV in silence, thinking of other ways to communicate.
I had an idea.
“Football,” I said, pointing to the TV.
“Hai!” he said.
“Do you like it?” I said.
He looked confused.
I made a happy face and pointed to the TV. I then made a sad face and pointed to the TV, miming my question.
He looked even more confused.
We resumed laughing at nothing for the next couple of minutes. We felt safe with this arrangement.
The adverts came on the TV with the Stones' Start Me Up playing over a beer commercial.
“Ah! Rolling Stones,” Shoko's dad said with a big smile.
“Rolling Stones!” I said with an even bigger smile.
Shoko's dad looked incredulous. “Uh? Rolling Stones?” he asked, with amazement.
“Hai, I like Rolling Stones,” I said.
He laughed and shook my hand, clearly delighted he had met a fellow fan.
The next ten minutes consisted of the two of us saying the title of Stones’ tracks, and occasionally singing them. It turned out Shoko's dad was a fanatical fan because he started to sing the relatively obscure Stones' song Tell Me at the top of his lungs.
This new found topic of discussion beat laughing at nothing, that's for sure.
As Shoko's dad was mimicking the harmonica solo in Midnight Rambler, Shoko and her mother walked into the living room and laid out pots of steaming Nabe on the low-rise table.
Before we ate, the family put their hands together and said “itadakimasu.” The Japanese word for giving thanks.
I tried seconds later. “Eat-a-dead-eye-mask” was my interpretation of the word.
Over dinner, Shoko acted as my translator and through her I realised how lovely her family were. They were warm and affectionate towards their daughter and hospitable and friendly towards me.
Shoko's mum whispered something into her daughter's ear.
“My mum says she likes your floppy long hair. It makes you look like a cute rock star,” Shoko revealed.
“Er, thankyou very much,” I said.
I reasoned I should compliment her back.
“Well, I can see where your daughter gets her good looks from,” I said.
Her mum laughed with her hand over her mouth after hearing Shoko's translation.
Shoko's dad lunged at me with a knife in his hand, screaming something in Japanese.
“Holy fucking shit!” I screamed, jumping out of my chair.
Shoko translated her father's comment.
“Stop flirting with my wife!” he had said.
“I was just being friendly,” I said with a weak voice wrecked by fear.
Shoko's dad suddenly broke into hysterical laughing.
I should have realised he was joking, and that he wasn't serious about gutting me at the dinner table.
I settled back into my chair and ate in silence as Shoko and her parents conversed with each other.
I was hoping that after dinner Shoko and I would make our way to a nearby hotel, and repeat our Love Hotel shenanigans. But as Shoko and I were clearing the table, she told me that her parents would like me to spend the night.
I encouraged Shoko to try and find a plausible excuse to turn down this offer. She refused, and said it would be a nice gesture if I stayed the night. I knew it would be a nice gesture, but I was far more interested in gesturing privately with Shoko.
The steely look in Shoko’s eyes made it clear that there was no choice but to stay.
Shoko's room was next door to her parents room, which meant that the only thing separating us was a flimsy fusuma door. As a result, I could clearly hear Shoko's parents movements next door. Any hanky-panky with Shoko was out of the question. But I've always been a risk taker, and to prove this, I kissed Shoko only to be startled by a loud bang on the fusuma followed by Shoko's dad speaking in Japanese.
“Behave yourself, boy,” was Shoko's translation of what her father had just said.