‘Now, I have to admit that my mom does all the ironing for me and the only time I’ve ever done it is in home economics class. Plus, my boyfriend hasn’t even told me what it is he’s trying to iron. He’s already like, “What temperature should I set it at? And what does it mean by ‘steam’?” He’s way ahead of himself!’
‘So true!’
‘Then I asked him what he wanted to iron and he said, “A shirt.” But there are all different kinds of shirts. So I get out my home economics textbook and I ask him what material it is and he’s like, “Huh? How am I supposed to know that?!” I tell him it’s written on the label and he goes, “What label?”’
The girls erupted into more squeals and high-pitched laughter. Misa’s shoulders quivered with a suppressed giggle. The looks from the other passengers in their car grew sterner – but rather than give them the side-eye, thought Misa, they’d be better off listening to the conversation and having a laugh.
‘There’s no use being angry and he’s about to lose it so I tell him to look for a little cloth tag that should be attached inside the collar or along one of the side seams. He finally finds it but then …’
The finish to Et-chan’s story was a cracker.
‘He says he can’t read the kanji! This is a grown man who went through university!?’
‘What an idiot!’
Et-chan’s friends were brutal in their assessment as they howled and chortled and their laughter gave cover to Misa’s audible giggle.
‘And then …’
‘So I ask him to describe what the characters look like over the phone. He goes, “Part of it is the character for ‘thread’.”’
‘That must be the radical!’ said one girl.
‘How are you supposed to figure it out from just that?’ said another.
These girls were all cramming for their entrance exams that year, so their questions were merciless as they gasped with laughter.
‘Well, I know how clueless he is so I take pity on him. I ask him patiently, “There must be something else next to the character for ‘thread’, right? What does that look like?” and he says, “It’s like the character for ‘moon’.”’
‘He must mean the character for “silk”!’
‘Though he still missed the part that’s above the character for “moon”!’
‘So then I looked it up in my textbook and helped him figure out how to iron his shirt. But it’s a bit outrageous, isn’t it? I mean, for a college graduate with a job?’
It
‘Did you tell him it’s the kanji for “silk”?’
Et-chan nodded. ‘He was shocked when I told him. You wouldn’t believe how shocked he was.’
‘I wonder if your boyfriend knows the character for “cotton”? Seems like there might still be some landmines there …’
‘Oh, wow – I don’t know how I’d manage to explain that kanji to him!’
Et-chan’s friends laughed again at her deadpan assessment.
‘Then, well, I wasn’t sure how he’d take it coming from me but I kind of told him off over the phone. I said that even though he always uses a computer and hardly ever has to write things out by himself, at some point not knowing kanji is gonna come back to bite him in the backside. I told him he better study up. And he was like, “I know, you’re right. I’ll get myself some kanji drills.” Honestly, I feel like I ought to make him take a reading aptitude test.’
It was cruelly amusing to imagine a grownup getting such a talking-to from a high-school girl.
‘How did you meet him again?’
‘Uh, well, that’s not important.’
For the first time, the effusive Et-chan hesitated.
‘You’ve never told us, we want to hear,’ one girl said.
‘Yeah, tell us!’ said another.
Et-chan hemmed and hawed and then she warned them not to laugh before reluctantly confessing. ‘He chatted me up. At Tsukaguchi, no less.’
‘Wow, that’s random!’ Her friends didn’t laugh but their voices exclaimed in unison.
By ‘random’, they meant the location, not the way Etchan and he had met. Tsukaguchi was a large train station where the Itami Line linked up with the Kobe Line, predominantly known for the big hulking shopping centre in front of the station where there was a chain-store supermarket and a bunch of restaurants. Very mundane.
The majority of patrons were housewives, as students from the nearby women’s college or high school only ever shopped at Tsukaguchi by necessity, preferring to go to Osaka or Kobe for their real shopping. It was a totally random location for a pick-up spot. In front of Tsukaguchi Station, anyone who might be calling out to passers-by was usually soliciting for surveys or a blood drive.