I Make Peace With My German Friend (I Guess)

(If you have no idea what any of this is about, read this post first)

As I mentioned in a previous post, because my German arch-nemesis Tom frequents Beer Hall (the local foreign hang out), I decided to avoid dropping in by myself when I was bored, and instead only go to Beer Hall when I had specific plans to meet people there. This helped me avoid awkward situations, but eventually I decided that even this was giving into Tom too much. After all, I had some really great nights, and met some really fun people, by simply dropping in randomly.

On nights when I could see Tom sitting inside, I would just keep on walking and by-pass Beer Hall. This system worked for the summer and September when the doors of Beer Hall were wide open, and I could see clearly who was inside and who wasn’t. Now that the weather has cooled off a little, the doors are shut, and I can’t tell who is at the bar without going inside myself.

And so it happened that the other night I had no plans and so just swung by Beer Hall by myself. I opened the door and walked in, and there was Tom sitting at the table. He didn’t see me at first; his back was to the door. I contemplated turning around and walking right out, but other people had seen me now, and I didn’t want to show any signs of weakness that would give Tom an advantage in any future encounters. So I walked up towards the front counter.

As I passed Tom I nodded my hello. “Hey,” he called out to me. “I’ve forgotten your name. You always greet me by saying ‘Hello Thomas’, but I don’t know your name.”

He said it in a friendly way, but I was sure he was just trying to get rid of my advantage (see previous post). But what could I do? It would have been incredibly childish to refuse to give him my name, so I shook his hand, patted him on the back as if he was an old friend, and re-introduced myself. Then I said, “excuse me just a sec, I’m going to order something from the bar. I’ll be right back.”

To me it seemed the worst thing to do was have an awkward conversation when I was halfway to the bar, and still hadn’t ordered or taken a seat yet. If I was going to talk to Tom, I would rather do it once I had already ordered my food and sat down. Once I had my food I sat down right next to Tom. It was a bit of a bold move, but I didn’t really care anymore. Things couldn’t get any worse between us, and if he reacted with hostility than at least I’d have a new story on the encounter. Things had been a bit boring around here recently anyway. On the other hand, if he wanted to continue in the friendlier tone he had started in on, than maybe we could end this silly feud once and for all.

Tom was talking to someone else at the table, so I just read my book. Then when he wrapped up his previous conversation, he turned to me and asked what I was reading. I showed him the cover of my book, “The Debacle” by Emile Zola. “I don’t know if you’re familiar with this book or not,” I said. “I’m just starting it myself.”

He knew the book. “Ah, yes, the Paris Commune. This is an excellent book. So you like history?” He then reached into his bag and pulled out Napoleon’s Autobiography (in the original French. Damn multi-lingual Europeans). “I’ve been very interested in the French Revolution for some time now,” he continued. “I’ve been studying Napoleon for the past 12 years.”

“12 years?” I said in surprise.

“Well, I’m a few years older. I’m 29.” He must have assumed I was fresh out of University like most of the other English teachers here. “My first love was Greek and Roman history, but recently I’ve been more interested in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.”

“Well, we’ve got that in common,” I answered. “I entered University as a Classics Major, and then switched to European History once I got interested in the French Revolution.”

He then proceeded to lecture me at length about the importance of Napoleon on European history. At first I tried to get a few words in edgewise, but after a while gave up and let him talk. We were still uneasy around each other, and I was unsure of his motive for doing this. I didn’t know if this was a genuine love of history coming through, or if he was showing off, and I had just entered a pissing contest on who knew more about the French Revolution.　　And then he continued from Napoleon into a lecture on the Greek Persian war, and how 300 Spartans had saved Western Civilization. “That’s why I joined the Navy,” he said, “because I was inspired by that story. I wanted to protect my country. And I spent 3 years defending Germany and it was an honor to do so. But I came to Japan because I wanted to experience new things.”

“But,” he continued. “It’s so frustrating in Japan. You can’t talk to any Japanese people about history or politics. They don’t have any interest, and they don’t know anything at all. Most of them barely know about Japanese history or politics, let alone world history or politics.”

“You know I feel exactly the same way,” I responded. We talked in this vein for a while, complaining about how ignorant the Japanese were. I would have been perfectly content to just avoid the awkward topic of our first encounter, but he brought it up eventually.

“I want to talk about what happened 6 months ago, because I think it’s important we clear this up,” he said. “First of all I want you to know that I never, never raped anyone. I’m a gentleman. I would never do that.”

This was a bit out of the blue. Aya had never said anything to me about rape, and the fact that he was now vehemently denying it suddenly made me wonder if he had actually done it, and things were even worse than Aya had told me. But I kept my mouth shut and listened to what else he had to say.

“Secondly that girl, she came to me. I was sitting in the coffee shop minding my own business just trying to read my book, and she came up to me and asked me to teach her English. And I tried to help her as best I could because I felt sorry for her. She was going through a lot at that time. She was moving apartments, and I helped her move all her stuff just because I felt sorry for her. I didn’t even want anything out of it. But she used me and she played with my feelings. She thinks foreigners are just toys she can play with. I tried to tell her that foreigners are people too, and she can’t just move from one to the other like we don’t have feelings, but she just wanted to play with foreign boys.”

There were a number of red flags going up in my mind. For one thing he seemed to be making himself out to be to good. Secondly, I knew from talking to other people that Tom often does try and pick up random Japanese girls in coffee shops by using his angle as an English teacher. But again, I just kept quiet and listened to what he had to say.

“And then on that day we met, she had come to me and asked to meet with me in the coffee shop. That was why I was so upset when I saw her walking away with you. I wanted to tell her that she can’t do those kind of things. She can’t set up a meeting with one person and then just walk away with another. I wasn’t upset at you, you understand. It was just the situation. I was upset at her and it came out at you.

“But since that time I’ve seen you many other times, and I know you’re not a bad person. I can see it in your eyes that you’re a kind person. And I often see you here at beer hall and you’re very friendly with everyone else, so I know you’re not a bad person. It was just the situation. I was angry and the Latin part of me” (apparently Tom had some French blood in him) “was going a bit crazy, and I said things I shouldn’t have. So I’m sorry if I hurt you or your country by what I said.”

I tried to explain my perspective on things. “Look, all I know is what she told me, and I have no way of knowing whether what she said is true or not. I suspected she wasn’t being completely honest with me. I never caught her in a direct lie, but she was so concerned that I don’t pay attention to what anyone else says that I suspected she was hiding something.

“I had only met her a week before that incident. We live in the same town, so she had seen my picture on a school publication, and picked me out in Gifu city. She just approached me in Gifu city one day and asked me to teach her English.”

“Ah, so she did the same thing to you,” Tom said. “I figured. That’s exactly what she did to me. She just came up to me and asked me to teach her English.” Come to think of it, it was the same. Maybe Tom was telling the truth about that after all.

“Anyway, I didn’t know how to go about teaching a private lesson,” I continued. “So I just had her keep an English journal and told her I would look at it once a week and we would focus on what seemed to be problem areas. And the next week when I met her, the journal was all about you. Now of course I have no way of knowing whether it is true or not. All I know is what she wrote.”

“It’s okay,” Tom said in an almost paternalistic voice. “You can tell me.”

“Well, she said you had picked her up in a coffee shop using the hook of teaching English.”

Tom shook his head as if to say: “it figures.”

“And she said you were harassing her ever since then. And when she tried to break it off, you came to her place of work and yelled at her until the police escorted you away.”

Tom threw his hands up in the air as if to say: “what will this crazy woman think of next?”

“Of course I didn’t know you at the time. I had you confused with someone else, and so I told her I would get this all straightened out. And then it was the very next day that we all met by the bookstore. She didn’t say anything about having previously arranged to meet you at the coffee shop. So when you showed up I thought it was just because you were stalking her. She wanted me to go into the coffee shop and talk to you, but I said I didn’t even know you, so I would just walk her as far as the station to make sure you didn’t bother her. And that’s when you came out. But of course you were thinking she was going to meet you in the coffee shop, and you didn’t know what she had been telling me…”

I was kind of getting into the rhythm of my own story, and wanted to keep going, but Tom was eager to explain his side of things again. I guess we were both more interested in explaining ourselves than in listening to the other person.

I still had no way of knowing who was telling the truth. As Tom threw shook his head and threw his hands up in the air, I thought to myself, actually yeah, the whole thing, especially the idea of him yelling at her until the police came and escorted him out does all sound a little bit too ridiculous to be true. On the other hand he didn’t act particularly surprised at anything. He did gesture to indicate how ridiculous he thought it was, but there was no element of shock or surprise when I related what Aya had told me. It was almost like he was expecting these allegations to appear.

What’s more, on our first encounter when I had said to Tom: “I’m concerned that you’re harassing her at work”, he didn’t deny it. In fact he acted as if I had struck a nerve by saying it.

As for the coffee shop: who knows whether there had actually been some sort of meeting set up, or if Tom had been stalking Aya. He did even at the time make references to a promise to meet in the coffee shop, so he was obviously under the impression that there was an agreement. On the other hand, she was obviously not happy to see him. She had become frigid at his presence, and even hid behind me when he came over to remind her about the meeting in the coffee shop. So he could have been under no illusions about her feelings on the matter. And it seems very unlikely that Aya had set up the meeting like he said, unless she was an incredibly good actress.

On the other hand, Aya later told me that there actually was an agreement to meet in the coffee shop, but that Tom had pressured her into making it, and that she really didn’t want to go. It didn’t change things so much, but it was something she didn’t tell me until after the confrontation with Tom was over. Again, not a huge deal, but why not tell me immediately so that I would know what was going on when I was trying to defend her against Tom? And once you discover that someone has withheld some information from you, then you begin to question everything else they say.

(I had lost contact with Aya shortly after the incident anyway. I suspected she might be attracted to me, and I had one of those: “Just so nobody gets hurt feelings, we better clear this up now” type talks, and she stopped contacting me shortly after that. I didn’t mind because I was the one doing her a favor by giving her free English lessons, so I simply let it go.)

But, after having gone through the trouble to list all this, I come to the conclusion that I don’t care. When a relationship goes bad, there’s always a lot of “He said/She said” bullshit. Who was using who, or which person had to be escorted away by the police. As long as this thing is in the past, what happened between them is none of my businesses really.

Certainly nothing drives a man crazier than the feeling that a girl you once had is slipping away from you. I think we’ve all been there at one time or another. Back when I lived in Oita I myself had a similar experience, and ended up yelling at a guy I shouldn’t have yelled at, and saying some things I regretted. I knew I was in the wrong, but I felt like I couldn’t help myself. So I understand the feeling.

Of course Tom crossed the line when he compared me to George Bush, but he had apologized for it now, and there was no point in holding a grudge.

Even assuming everything Aya had said about Tom was true, it would be no reason why I couldn’t be on friendly terms with him. I might want to keep him at arms length of course. He wouldn’t be the kind of person I would want to introduce to my sisters, or ask to water my plants when I went on vacation, but there was nothing to prevent me from greeting him in Beer hall or talking with him about history. Certainly glaring at him every time I passed him in Beer Hall wasn’t going to help anything. Besides, the Bible calls upon us to treat our enemies with kindness. Even if Tom is a horrible person, I should still be friendly to him when I meet him. And besides, we foreigners move in too small of circles for Tom and me to continue this feud.

So I guess were friends now. We parted on good terms. I suppose I’m just too nice of a person to have enemies :). And, as I have noted on this blog before, there is something odd about how people we argue with always end up becoming friends sooner or later.

But if (and this may be a pretty big “if”) Tom really is everything Aya made him out to be and is preying on young Japanese girls, then there is a small voice in the back of my head that says someone ought to confront him on it, and I am simply taking the path of least resistance by choosing to be friendly with him instead.

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Peter Bratt links to some images of Fox news throughout history. It's not intelligent political commentary, but good cheap laughs.