Date: May 10, 2001   Right now I'm feeling: Very Confused Right now I'm listening to: Brilliant Green Brilliant Green -- Lucky Star   Kinkaku-Ji -- The Golden Pavilion Nijo-Jo Castle Women Against my better judgement, I decided to try dating again. I've been seeing this one girl, Kaori, and it seemed to be going well, but this past weekend we went out and she just froze up in the middle of our date. It was like kicking a stalled car trying to get any response out of her. It really looks like that she has some issues that she has to work through. I'm trying to work through them with her, but sometimes I think, why should I? I'm tired of doing that. Why does every girl (with one or two exceptions) I go out with seem to have serious issues that need to be worked through? I had to work through my own stuff, and did a pretty good job, I thought. On the whole, she's a great girl. Like I said before, she's exceptionally smart, very attractive, very diverse in her interests, well-traveled, etc. Seems perfect on the cover, but opening up the book is a different story. A bad habit I have these days is to compare the girls that I would go out with to my ex-girlfriend. The American girlfriend I broke up with just before I started this journal. She was just about as perfect as I ever encountered. There were issues, but nothing, nothing like the other girls I dated. Half the time I think I should never have broken up with her, and the other half I know it was the best thing I could have done. Anyway, so I'm comparing Kaori to my ex all the time, something I shouldn't do, and I have this little nagging voice in my head that I shouldn't be going out with her, which has nothing to do with the fact that I may be leaving soon. I trust my intuitions a lot more than most people, but I think this voice is there because I've just been burned too many times and I'm afraid of getting burned again. The idea of taking on emotional baggage while dating her doesn't really make me nervous, but the inevitable break-up does make me nervous. Very nervous. This nervousness isn't totally unfounded. Last year I talked about how Japanese women have no idea what a relationship actually consists of. Yes, yes, yes, you can say that it's just considered different things here in Japan, but the only reason that at stages of relationship the stages aren't really defined is so that one or the other can back out without too many hard feelings because if you're dating, your just dating and that means absolutely nothing. As far as I can tell, the only thing that actually means something is if you are engaged or something like that. Something that cements the other person to you. If you don't have that, you could be out in the cold the next day even if you've been going out for six months. Like I said, it makes me nervous. We've talked about this, at length, and we've both agreed that if we want to see other people then all we have to do is tell the other person. But we have to tell the other person, give them a heads-up warning, because both of us have been hurt too many times. That was the best I could get out of her. I've been suffering all this week with fever and stuff because I have tonsilitis. I hate it. At first I like getting out of work, but then I know so many students are looking forward to seeing me it makes me feel guilty then really bad. I've been taking medicine and I'm supposed to be getting better, but I'm not really and I'll have to go see him again. Hopefully I'll be able to get into work next week.