Kantoku Hako Pt. 2: Bakappuru

So the 7 or so months we’d spent together were some of the best of my life. Much to my surprise I had caught myself thinking about how good my life was pretty frequently.

I already told you we were opposites.. but things were opposite, in me. I didn’t quite understand it.

I was losing weight. I’d never lost so much weight whilst in a relationship before.

I wasn’t drinking. Not even on new years eve.

On new years eve she went out with her guy friends, without me. That sort of thing would usually drive me insane, but I trusted her and it was fine.

It was so strange. New.. or at the very least, something I hadn’t had in a long time. Healthy love in a healthy relationship. But then again, I always have a bad memory when it comes to remembering the good times in my life. I focus so much on whats been happening recently that it can drag me down pretty quickly.

“What do you like about japan?” she asked me one time.

“Katakana” I replied.

“KATAKANA?! nobody ever says katakana.”

I think it stemmed from when katakana in design first became popular, and I used to sit in my room and dream that I would one day create stuff half as cool as that of The Designers Republic.

Around a month after we started dating, we made books for eachother. I made her a book about how we met and she made me a book about japanese phrases. She wrote out all of the hiragana and katakana table for me as well as some common sentences.

It was obvious to us as well as others that we were pretty crazy about eachother. We were what the japanese call “bakappuru” which comes from 2 words. “Baka” which means stupid, and “Kappuru” which means couple.

No prizes for figuring out the translation.

Every week we had some new phrase to talk about thanks to her english lessons. After she learnt things like “sweetie” and “darling” we never stopped calling eachother pet names. It started out ironically but we were so gay for each other we started to mean it. I can still hear her saying “my sweetieeeeee!!” She also learnt the phrase “love handles” which she never let me forget I had, but I didn’t mind.

I was only a 40 minute drive from her at any time, but that didn’t stop us from Skyping for at least an hour every night. I remember how I used to stare at the screen and wish she was next to me.

Even a month after she has gone, I still miss rubbing the small of her back to make her feel comfortable. It was a tiny thing I did every week that really contributed to my newfound feeling that I was building a happy place for myself in the world. Which was something that carried with it such a sense of novelty that I have to wonder if I’d ever felt that way before.