Picture this: late night chats in Japanese

The party is mostly over and we sit around the low table snacking on the leftover food and pouring wine.  1 of the 6 japanese speaks great English, another 2 can put together a broken sentence, and I am doing my best to say everything I can in Japanese.  I manage to come up with broken versions of about 50% of what I want to say.

If you’ve been here, if you are aware of world cultures, you generally assume that Japanese are fairly conservative.  Quirky, sometimes extremely so, but generally polite respectful and quiet about sensitive or personal issues.

Its 3am and we are talking about the recent loss of one of the fellows virginal status and what he could do to get better in the bedroom.  It is not uncommon in America to sit around chatting about personal stories with your girlfriends over drinks.  But now I am with half guys and half girls, all straight and we are discussing personal sexual preferences and experiences as if its a board meeting.  There is something overly intimate and oddly sterile about the whole experience, as if we were discussing medieval architecture. I try to explain that if this was America, offering such personal details to straight members of the opposite sex would be a act of flirtation, trying to rile and excite them.  But this had no such mood, no temptation, no baiting.  Simply a group discussing and consenting about the pros and cons of trimming pubic hair and what to say after sex is over.  I would never share with my straight male friends what kind of hair trimming I do or do not partake in, lest they imagine it or take that as I sign that I would like them to see it.  Yet we chat merrily and easily with some giggles but no blushing.

To top off the experience, the Carpenters are crooning softly in the background.  I am doing by best to keep up in Japanese as the only geijin in the room.

I couldn’t help mid-experience stopping to take mental picture of this drunken board room of japanese sensibly discussing sex technique as passionlessly as breakfast cereals in the middle of the night with the Carpenters filling all the silences. A unique moment is always worth remembering.