Stephanie in Japan: Travis in Japan (Part 1)!

I believe I have mentioned in previous posts that my boyfriend, Travis, would be coming to Japan to visit me. Well, he’s here now, and it is amazing! He came March 9^th and is leaving May 12^th. So, he’s here for a while. It’s already been a month since he arrived, and we've done so many things that I think I will have to break this up into a few posts. I’ll start off by simply explaining about when he first got here and my feelings. I’ll write about specific events in later posts.

Our first purikura together. :3

When he first got here, I met him at Kyobashi station. I was very anxious while I was waiting for him. When I finally saw him I was nervous because I hadn't informed him yet about PDA in Japan. Basically, holding hands in the extent of PDA in Japan. So, when I saw him, I gave him a really quick hug and kiss and told him that we couldn't kiss a lot in public. I felt kind of bad because we were so excited to see each other. As I lead him home, it was very strange. He was very tired and jet-lagged because he didn't sleep at all on the plane. He had a long train ride from the airport in which he was worried about getting lost. I think his brain was kind of fried. Before getting home, we stopped at the supermarket and picked up some quick dinners. We got home, ate, got him unpacked, and went to sleep after catching up a bit.

For me, my tension was pretty high at first because this was the first time we were actually going to live together…even if it’s only two months. We had lived in the same dorm buildings before in college, and when we got our own private places in school, we always took turns staying at each other’s places each night, but it was not the same as living together for a few reasons. We did have to do each other’s chores, cook, grocery shop, pay bills, etc. I am an insanely neat and clean person. In my mind, everything has its place. I’m probably a bit obsessive compulsive. I can’t function, and I feel like I’m going to freak out if anything is dirty. Travis, on the other hand, is not the cleanest. It’s hard to describe it, but basically, he’s just kind of unaware of what he is doing because his mind is always running. Seeing as I have a particular way of doing things and he is kind of the opposite, I was very tense about how he was going to come into my place and mess up my order. We had discussed this beforehand, and he agreed to do his best which was good enough for me. It was just really hard the first week or two to teach him about how I clean, shop, etc. Not to mention, I had to help him acclimate to Japan by teaching him where things are, how to get around, and how to say things in Japanese. I must say, he acclimated to Japan way better than anyone else who has visited me. Within the first week, he was taking trains, grocery shopping, and going to restaurants by himself no problem! I think it helped that he enjoyed the challenge of speaking to Japanese people by using gestures and a few Japanese and English words. I’m always nervous and afraid when I have to do something I’m not confident about. Once we got past the hurdle of him adjusting to my lifestyle, things got a lot better. I hope someday we can get a place together and create our own lifestyle instead of him just coming into my apartment and having to do things my way.

I’ll explain our first full day together before finishing this post. His first full day here was a Sunday. The plum blossoms were in bloom at Osaka Castle Park so I took him there to see the castle and flowers. I thought it’d be romantic. It was fun, but there were some small problems. First, he got really sick for about an hour or so. We blamed it on the supermarket meal he bought at the store for dinner the previous night, but I suppose it could have been the plane food or the stress of traveling and sitting on a plane for a whole day with not much sleep. In any case, I feel like I let him down because he got sick probably off of his first Japanese meal. I wondered if he wouldn't have a stomach for Japanese food the whole time he was here. After he felt a bit better, we continued to view the flowers and the castle. The flowers were gorgeous! There were white, pink, and red blossoms. Oh, I almost forgot, Travis had the privilege of experiencing a Japanese style squat toilet for the first time at the park. I asked him how he squatted over it only to find out that he had done it backwards haha! After that, I was able to tell him the correct way. For dinner, we went to a Japanese restaurant in Kyobashi. He got curry udon and loved it! I worried about whether he would get sick again, but he ended up being just fine. In fact, as of now, he’s only gotten sick twice, both off of the supermarket meals. We've decided to avoid those from now on (even though I’ve never had issues). Other than that, he really loves Japanese food a lot. His favorite is kushi-katsu (deep fried pieces of food on a skewer like meat, veggies, and cheese that you dip in a sauce). As of now, things are great, there’s no more tension, and I will get into specific events in later posts.