My hot date

So I went out with Reina yesterday and it was great. She is the first person I've hung out with outside of Nova and my first Japanese friend. At first it seemed like I fucked up severely by making plans with a girl who speaks little English. When I told my friend Rachel that I was taking this girl out her reaction was 'she's a really low level though, yeah?' It hadn't seemed like a problem to me prior to the date and wasn't as bad as you might assume. We met at the TV Tower, right outside this cafe yesterday at 2pm. It was, naturally, awkward for the both of us. She was trying to ask me something about eating and I was trying to tell her to decide. It was bumpy. She was also nervous about her English so speaking very quietly and I was having trouble hearing some of what she said. We went to a Starbucks on her suggestion and just tried talking to each other for an hour or so. She's a student at a university around here somewhere and she's studying International Culture. I don't know exacty what that means but she needs to pick a culture to focus on soon and she's leaning towards Great Britain. I was actually getting frustrated and bored after a little while so I thought if I told her I was going to the Nagoya International Center's library she would either use that as an excuse to leave or come along, and then I could gauge her interest. Taking her with me to get books is incredibly lame, I'm aware, but she walked with me until it became so windy and cold here that we were forced underground. After a minute or two at the library we headed back to the subway and tried to figure out what to do. I don't know the city so I was hoping she could suggest something, but no such luck. We hung out in the Kokusei Center station on the Sakura-dori line for a long-ass time. She called one of her friends for suggestions although I think she just told her friend what was funny and weird about our date and me. I proceeded to text my friends and do the exact same thing. After she suggested a few things that I've already seen and done, I told her I would call her some night, soon, and we'd go to a club or a bar.

I think my biggest blunder was inviting her for coffee in the afternoon. There just isn't anything interesting to do in this city and we both got bored. A bar would have a much better setting. I did learn though that communicating with another person has less to do with language than I thought. I found I could get my points across with examples, gestures, and just a few words in Japanese and English. She's cute and I'll definitely call her but the dating potential of a girl I can't really talk to is pretty low.

I find that my English has gotten worse as a result of being here and my thoughts have been simplified as well. I picked up a copy of the Financial Times yesterday (for 600 yen a copy I won't do it very frequently --- most places that sell the Economist charge about 1400 yen per issue) and for the first time since I arrived I caught myself up with world affairs. I think I may get a subscription to a newspaper soon because I don't like feeling ignorant about what's going on in the world. Reading about what's going on in Japan right now made me realize how ignorant I am of what's going on around me.

Anyway, I'm starving so I'll talk to you all later.