And then the cookie told me...

The light side

Now that I'm over the shock...I think...if well planned...this move will be very good and will make me feel more complete.  So...one year left...so much to do!

A date has been set

I naively had hoped our first few years of marriage would be in the states, a close distance to my mother. I had naively hoped for a lot of things but by chance of god or chaos Akira informed me that he would not be renewing his visa that a year from he'd like to go home and keep his mother company. To be very honest neither sound ideal but I have a year.... A year to ensure that this is truly what I want. you know what is ironic? I had willingly desired to live in Saudi Arabia but the thought if Japan not only sounds uncomfortable but I have this dread in my stomach. I can say I honestly have never desired that area nor ever paid it any attention until this past year. Instead I always thought I'd marry a Kaleejee man of some kind of rank and glide easily into the life of a Mideast wife... Eating dates praying in poems five times daily and stay safe in a veil. Now... Now it seems fate is mocking me because as Akira was telling me on the phone of our new location my god damn future cookie from pick up stix said, traveling to the east will give you great rewards. I actually accused Akira of planting it since he negotiates with so many food companies. But no... Soooo, inshallah I'll have more confirmation to this decision then a damn cookie.

Takes time to realize Things

It took me a while, mainly because Akira has flawless English, for me to realize the quorkiness he had wasn't quorkiness, it was him being Japanese.  One of these were his hmms, and uhhhss, and the tilting head movements. 

Naseem's...noises...are more defined, overly done and overly pitched, though I never mind it because in my eyes that woman can do no wrong, I adore her.  But with Akira, I truly thought he was considering what I was saying...instead of trying to avoid disagreeing with me, LOL.  For a long time, I thought we were clones, because he hardly ever disagreed with me.  It wasn't until I started reading blogs and started paying attention to my Japanese friends. I started to notice that they all avoided disagreeing with me by these noises.  And it's amazing because here I was, close friends with Naseem and a few other girls, and I never ever noticed that they were being polite.  I actually to this day feel gulity about it because I never took the time to pay attention to their culture.  I actually considered Naseem to be Persian, I never really saw her as Japanese because...well...she didn't look Japanese.  And see, even saying something like that is awful. 

But when I started dating Akira, so many things he did would remind me of Naseem.  In fact, being around him would make me miss her because I was use to seeing her daily, and now I was seeing Akira daily.  Then when we would all hang out together, I finally saw it.  They tip toed around me...in fact Naseem got extremely nervous around me and kept eyeing me.  I felt bad, but I was actually jealous.  It was the first time I ever had that kind of experince, and it was because I was around a culture I completely didn't understand but my other half did.  It was un-nerving...to the point that I never brought Naseem around Akira again.

I guess because I loved them both so much...I didn't want to be left out...but I know they would never do that to me, but it felt like it.  And it was again, the first time I realized I wasn't one of them.  So that experince has made me extremely nervous about meeting the family in Japan.  I didn't know a thing about the Japanese other then hear-say.  So I started reading books, I started trying to learn Japanese, and I've started reading blogs...and now I'm blogging...I guess to record my progress on it all. 

I do have to say...in most cases...the avoiding conflict ordeal is very useful.  Akira and I a few weeks ago had a terrible fight, to where I didn't sleep or eat for three days and I was basically a nervous wreak.  He left his work and actually came to mine with a gift once he realized what kind of shape I was in...we recently lost our child, I wasn't that far along...a few weeks, and he was away on business and has been almost every week and comes home during the weekends, but it's been very hard to deal with it all alone because no one knows.  So when he was flirting with a few girls on facebook...well...I unleashed hell on him.  I know he was doing it to seem funny, the only issue was that one girl was middle eastern, and the other American, and I know they saw it as a socially ackward moment, and I know the middle eastern girl thought it meant Akira had no respect for me.  We middle easterners don't flirt to joke around.  Hell...we're told not to smile to the opposite sex, much less joke.  So I was a mess.  I was embarrassed, I was depressed, and I was angry at being alone and ignored.

Anyhow, we went away for the weekend, and we made a pack...that this part of our relationship, we would avoid conflict.  Once again, adding another egg shell to tip toe around.  I'm not sure if it's healthy, but I have to be honest...the no fighting thing...it's helping me recover.  Here we're trained to talk about things over and over, but sometimes that's like picking a scab and in the end all it does is leave a scar.  What we are doing is kind of like, putting a bandaid on it.  Out of sight until it's healed and we can remove it.  It's not being avoided...it's being left for time to heal it.

In that aspect...I think Akira being Japanese is a good thing, because I don't know what I would have done had this happened with someone else.  His little quorks...turned out to be little ways to make our life happier.

There are things he does that annoy the shit out of me...he'll avoid too many things, or he'll pretend he didn't hear me or he'll be over dramatic before he tells me he did something I won't like...he'll bury his head in a pillow or something...sometimes I get mad, but usually I just wait it out, and play with his hair until he feels secure enough to tell me.  And these things, while they annoy me because it takes up time to get to the point, in the end...everything usually turns out okay.

I'm not saying I want to be Japanese, I actually have no desire for that, or to look Japanese or any of that, I'm pretty happy being Persian...but there are so many things that they do that I resist at first, I guess by default...but in the end...it turns out for the better.  The result is the same...but how they react to the result is different.  It makes me think of a bumper sticker I saw when I was 21, Life is 1% of what happens to you and 99% of how you react to it.

Walking on Egg Shells

There are a few issues that if Akira and I discuss...it will lead to a massive fight.  One of these have been an issue with us since the very get go. 

Workmates and strippers...and calling it a "meeting". 

Now I had no clue what people meant when they told me that the Japanese were perverted.  Mainly because I had only known Japanese women, and never paid any attention to the men...because...well...I just never found them interesting to be honest.  I really didn't get the entire Asian dating scene.  Where couples never really hung out together, PDA was a no no, and the constant peace sign (victory sign...whatever) being thrown up...I really wondered what their sex was like since the boys seemed immature in my eyes and really selfish and the women were just timided and actually, pretty passionate but never acted like that around men (omg...).  Anyhow...when I started dating Akira, everyone, including my Japanese girl friends...kept warning me about watching his wallet because they didn't consider paying for women as cheating.

Well you better believe I went off on that.  And it turned out that Akira was quite use to using the sex industary...so I quickly made the playing feild even.  Men are jealous, and God forbid if you hurt a man's feelings...it seems like the world is over for them, that some massive betrayial was done by the minor offense the woman did.  Akira didn't understand why I thought it was cheating.  So we went to a strip club (since I almost started stripping myself) and quickly I started showing him the real deal.  How the women hated their clients, the different kinds of abusive treatments, the drug use, ect.  Then I started to make it even.  I started to show him how men that fequented these events saw women as nothing (and I used myself as an example and showed him how men reacted with me)...and then I told him if he had strippers, that I would do the same and go to a male one and put the pictures everywhere.  I told him the truth, I will always make things even.  I'm not into the entire, roll over and let the man do whatever cause he's a man.  Fuck that shit. 

You're a person, I'm a person, we both deserve respect.  End of story.  The sex industry has no place in my life and if you're going to be in my life, it better not be in yours either, otherwise get the fuck out of my life.  Period.  See?  Even now I'm getting pissed.  I guess cause I've been around the industry for the past 6 years, and when I mean around I mean I was literally in it.  Russian dating sites full of Russian women all plotting to marry, get the green card, and rob the man they are with blind, meanwhile cheating on them all along the way.  The parties alone, the cheapest ticket I saw (and the parties were very classy parties no sex involved because it was a match making site) was for $3,000.  The cheapest. 

Then there was the few year stint where I was with Saudi royality, and the shit I saw.  From ordering women off of menus to realizing I was part of harem and that the girls dancing around me were paid by the club to dance around me so no other men would dance around me...well...

I hate the sex industry.  To the core.  The only thing I find acceptable is professional porn where both parties are paid actors and paid fairly, treated fairly.  Other than that, the rest is trash.

So when Akira told me that his now boss and him would go to Mexico for hookers (even though his boss is married), or how he would go to strip clubs, how all the new Japanese coming to America would want to see the strip clubs, or how the other men didn't think it was cool for him to contact me after not hearing from him all day...well...I ripped them apart.  I do mean them.  I really don't give a shit who you are at work, I actually hold zero value to a person on what their job is.  The value comes from how that person lives their life and how they treat others.  If you're married and fucking around, I don't care if you're a God damn billionaire because I have been with a God Damn billionaire.  You're nothing to me but a dog.  When I found out the prince was cheating on me, I threw a packed suitcase to his sleeping head.  No gift will ever ever ever cool me off towards him, and God knows from 21-25 he tried.  It's been nice to actually have a year where I have heard nothing from him.  Anyhow...Akira knows that if I ever caught him at a strip club, hostess bar, anything...I would truly destroy everything.

You break up with me if you're going to do that shit, is what I told him, and I mean it.  It takes two seconds to break up and do whatever the fuck you want.  If you WANT to fuck me, than you can't do whatever else you want.  Cause I'm not some girl on the side of the street, I'm from good breeding and it's wrong.  All the way around wrong to go to those places, especially if you're in a relationship.  If you want to be desperate...then do it alone.

Anyhow...anytime anything even remotely related to that is brought up...we walk carefully around it to make sure we don't accidentlly start a massive fight.  It's something I give the Japanese credit for, they are masters at avoiding conflict and Akira does it pretty.  Sometimes not well enough, in which case he distants himself, avoids me, avoids everything basically. 

That's another thing I'll write about, how we decided to define what lying was, that just because he didn't say it, doesn't mean it wasn't a lie.  That goes into his female friends file.  But that's for another time. 

I would just like to note...that when you're dating Japanese...that these things are massively different then what we as Westerners are use to (and wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy different from what middle easterners do).  But there are advantages to walking on egg shells.  People aren't always going to agree on everything, and sometimes avoiding topics are needed.  Now if he were still using these places, it would not be acceptable to avoid the topic, but since it is now in the past...there is no use in crying over spilt milk.  Live, learn, and move on. 

Move in

When Akira and I first got together, he was extremely distant.  It was weird because there was never an offical "move in" together moment.  It happened that way because he would invite me over, and since I had a key, I would go over and he would end up one hour late...two...three...trust me, our first few fights were over him telling me when he'd come home.

So I started cleaning up the place...because what else was I going to do?  I had no clue when he was coming home, and every 15min or so I'd get a text message so I just stuck around.  Eventually, after about two months or so...we both noticed we were living together. 

It was kind of a shock, we were coming back from our first road trip together, and as we were unpacking...we realized, holy shit...we live together.

I asked him if he was okay with that, and he said yeah that it was great, that he loved coming home to me.  So...that was that...I guess we started living together by the end of June...though we didn't realize it til the end of July.

But despite us living together, Akira was very distant.  I remember our first camping trip, prior to our first road trip, that he told me he loved me would that this is as far as he would emotionally go.  And I remember being pissed off and having four jello shots after that (we ended up at some random biker bar that had a coffin of jello shots...at 11am)  But...my my how things change.

The pics are from last weekend.  I'd say...we're extremely blessed and believe me, we're extrememly thankful for each other.

I'm on Akira's computer and it's confusing as hell because it's all in Japanese.

Anyhow, we went on an amazing little road trip this weekend, but when I looked at the pictures I felt horribly fat.  Now I know I said that I never want to try to be Asian skinny...I'm middle eastern, we just aren't built like that.  My body is very much like Shakira...with a huge ass, small top, and curly hair that isn't that hard to do anything with actually since I roll it everyday...can't complain about that...

But I'm chubby.  And it's annoying when I see shit like this....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0kD138mk2g&feature=related

But then I compare it to this....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0kD138mk2g&feature=related

And realize...I will never be under 100 pounds within serious illness...  So it's okay...I'll drop ten and feel better.