I Love You So Mochi

by Sarah Kuhn

  “KY?” I sputter.

  “Japanese slang—kuuki yomenai. It means you’re clueless in certain situations. You literally ‘can’t read the air,’ ” she says, cackling. “You know, if you’d actually told us about your visit, I could have schooled you on—”

  “Okay, okay. Back to the good itch situation. What do I do about it?” I grumble. There are a ton of things I want to fight her on, but somehow I know I’m not going to win this argument. “What does the great and powerful Ask Atsuko have to say?”

  “Here’s your official Ask Atsuko decree,” Atsuko says, nodding sagely. “Hang out with him again. Try not to think about how this possible relationship has a limited shelf life. And Kimi …” She leans in close again, her face nearly taking up the whole screen. “Have fun. My god. You just met a cute guy who engaged in tanuki-related subterfuge to get your freaking phone number.”

  “And you already like him!” Bex shrieks.

  I cover my face with my hands. I want to respond with some clever quip, but all I can manage is: “Blargh.”

  “Fun-having will totally help you figure out your future,” Atsuko says. “Because you won’t be obsessing over it and thinking about it and running your thought spirals into the ground. It’s like how I usually come up with my best advice responses when I’m in the shower, not thinking about my column. My brain is relaxed and open and the right advice just comes to me.”

  “I guess I could try that,” I say, gnawing on my thumbnail.

  “That’s the spirit,” Bex says, laughing. “We have to head out to meet Shelby for our hike now, Kimi, but please let us know the minute you’ve made further contact with Akira.”

  “I will,” I say. “I promise. Oh god, I miss you guys so much.”

  “Miss you, too!” Atsuko says, blowing me a noisy kiss.

  And then they blink out of sight. I let out a deep, cleansing breath. Just hearing their voices, seeing their faces, makes me feel better. Even if I’m not yet totally convinced of Ask Atsuko’s “have fun!” decree.

  I’m just about to set my phone down when it buzzes again. I glance at the screen, wondering if Atsuko and Bex forgot to tell me something. But no—it’s a new text from a number I don’t recognize.

  Konbanwa. This is the tanuki.

  That little series of bubbles appears underneath the text, indicating another one is forthcoming.

  Just kidding, it’s Akira.

  I can’t help the smile that’s already spreading over my face.

  Do you want to explore a new and exciting tourist site tomorrow?

  More bubbles.

  With me. In case that wasn’t clear.

  Dammit. Now my smile is ear to ear and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  You. Already. Like. Him, Atsuko says in my head. Have fun.

  I take a deep breath and type back a single word.

  Okay.

  Akira has taken me to a magical wonderland. I’m not even exaggerating.

  “Woooooooooow,” I breathe out, craning my neck to get a better view of the soaring stalks of pure green surrounding us.

  We’ve just entered the bamboo forest of Arashiyama, which, according to my grandfather, is one of the most famous sights in the world. He was very excited to hear I’d be visiting today and requested a full report later.

  “Like another world, ne?” Akira says, gesturing toward the bamboo that’s all around us. “This is what I thought of when you were describing the imaginary party where you would wear your dress. I know it’s not exactly the same, but—”

  “—but I’m still expecting a freakin’ unicorn to make an appearance,” I say, grinning at him.

  “Let’s keep walking,” he says, nodding at the path ahead of us. “And keep our eyes out for unicorns.”

  We walk, and I try to balance moving forward with my desire to just keep looking up, up, up. The bamboo stalks are impossibly tall, enclosing us in a soothing sea of green punctuated only by patches of gorgeous, hazy sunlight glinting through. Wind rustles through the bamboo and it’s as if it’s whispering to us, revealing all its secrets. I feel sheltered, protected. Like I’ve entered a beautiful, otherworldly pod where time has stopped, and all my problems have melted away. The path in front of us looks endless, like this beautiful sanctuary just keeps going forever. It’s kind of like being burritoed up in my cozy blanket—only on a way larger scale.

  A burst of giggles disrupts my peaceful thought train and my head snaps down to see a group of girls dressed in beautiful, brightly colored yukata, snapping a group selfie. My eyes drink in the gorgeous floral prints, the elaborate obi tying their garments together. There are bright pinks and blues, greens and golds. Extremely contrasting prints that look impossibly beautiful layered against each other. Seeing this bold rainbow splashed against the soft green of the bamboo strikes a chord deep in my heart—I can’t explain it, but I feel a sudden and undeniable bond of connection snap into place. For the first time since arriving in Japan, I recognize a little piece of my soul residing in its unfamiliar landscape.

  “Kimi?” Akira says. “Are you all right?”

  I force myself to turn from the girls and look at him quizzically.

  “You are … ah …” He points to one of his eyes, then trails a finger down his cheek.

  “Oh!” I realize then that my eyes have filled with tears. I hastily wipe them away. I don’t know how to even begin to explain why this sight is moving me so much.

  “Is this giving you ideas?” Akira continues, nodding in the girls’ direction. “For drawing more clothes?” His mouth quirks into a smile. “So many ideas, you cannot keep track of them? Is that why you are upset?”

  “Yes,” I say immediately. “I mean … no. I mean … yes, it’s giving me so many ideas. My brain is actually kind of bursting right now. But I’m not upset, I’m …” I trail off, trying to find the right words. “I’ve always loved kimono and yukata—the colors, the shape.” I swoon a little. “I love the contrasting patterns the obi usually have, too—so bold.”

  “Like the contrast you were talking about with your fantasy dress yesterday,” Akira says. “Contrast in shape, contrast in colors.”

  “Exactly. I actually have a kimono and obi that used to belong to my mom—she gave them to me when I turned fifteen. The kimono is this really vivid red with white flowers and the obi is this gorgeous orange with gold embroidery. Red and orange aren’t usually colors that people think of as going together—especially in those bright shades and especially with such elaborate prints on top of them.”

  Akira’s brow furrows. “Why not?”

  “You know, I’m not sure,” I say, laughing. “I just remember posting a photo of myself from Obon Fest in the whole getup—and having this clique of supposedly trendy white girls from my school ask me why I was wearing ‘clashing’ colors.” I smile at the colorful gaggle of girls across the way, who are still posing for selfies. “Watching them over there, having so much fun in all their beautiful, supposedly clashing colors—it makes me feel, I don’t know … emotional, somehow.”

  Akira cocks his head, studying me, and I feel instantly self-conscious.

  “I haven’t had a whole lot of occasions to wear the kimono outside of Obon Fest, though,” I say quickly, attempting to steer us back to more casual territory.

  “Why not create an occasion?” Akira says, a smile playing over his lips. “It could be as simple as walking with your friends through a bamboo grove.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I say, laughing a little. “But I’m pretty sure we don’t have any bamboo groves like this at home. Mom would definitely have taken me.”

  “Your mother is Japanese—from Japan?” he says. “I’m sorry, is that the right way to say it?”

  “She is Japanese from Japan,” I say, smiling at him. “My dad is Japanese, too, but Japanese American—four generations in. So I’m both Nisei and Gosei, which should be confusing, but somehow isn’t.”

  “How did your parents meet?” he
asks.

  “At college—UCLA,” I say. “That’s one of the big schools in LA. Mom got a scholarship to study art—painting. And her parents allowed her to go, but only if she also learned some kind of practical trade she could use when she returned to their farm just outside of Kyoto. They didn’t love the whole art thing, but I think they believed it was just a phase—something she’d get out of her system. They didn’t have a ton of money, so Mom decided she was also going to take business courses—I guess with the idea that she’d be able to help Obaasan and Ojiisan run the farm way better. But things didn’t exactly work out that way.”

  I’ve heard this story so many times, it has the feel of legend. Of course, after talking to my grandfather, it feels like the legend is shifting a little—becoming more blurry and shaded with different tones of gray. Still, my voice takes on a hushed, reverent quality as I talk—which, come to think of it, seems pretty appropriate for this beautiful bamboo grove. “She met my dad and they fell madly in love.”

  “Ah,” Akira says, nodding. “And let me guess: This did not sit well with your mother’s parents, ne? They disapproved?”

  “Oh, did they ever.” I cock an eyebrow. “They disapproved so hard. Especially when Mom and Dad got married and had a baby before they’d even graduated.”

  “The baby—this is you!” Akira exclaims, pointing at me.

  “This is me,” I agree.

  “I told you, my detective skills are excellent,” he says with a wink.

  “Anyway,” I say, rolling my eyes at him. “Somehow, they made it work. Mom held down a secretarial job during the day and took online graphic design courses at night while my dad got his restaurant off the ground. She even tried to help my grandparents and their farm out with some of the stuff she’d learned in her business classes—but my grandma really, really didn’t want to hear it. She felt like Mom ruined her whole life.” I pause, feeling a pang of sympathy for my grandmother—something I’ve never felt when I’ve told this story before. “And my parents raised me in between all that,” I finish. “Against all the odds, they made it work.” Somewhere in the midst of me relating my origin story, we’ve stopped in front of one particularly majestic stalk of bamboo. I gaze upward, following the flickers of sunlight playing through all the green. God, it’s gorgeous. I wonder if I could create a textile with a pattern that mimicked that?

  “Your parents sound cool,” Akira says.

  “They are,” I say, my voice soft. I’m still gazing up at that flicker of light. “Honestly, I don’t know how Mom did it—I think there were a few years of her life where she just didn’t sleep. She’s a total badass. Oh, that’s a slang term—”

  “You are afraid I’ll think you’re referring to an actual ass that is bad?” Akira gives me an amused look. “I know ‘badass,’ Kimi from America.” He gives me finger-guns.

  “American detective shows,” we say in unison and then burst out laughing. I realize I feel light, buoyant—I am actually sticking to my Ask Atsuko directive to have fun. Talking to Akira is so … I’m not sure what the word for it is. I wouldn’t say “easy.” It’s more like I’m getting used to the good itch. I’m enjoying it, even. I guess Atsuko would say I’m “stimulated.”

  Whatever the case: I feel like I can tell him anything.

  “It sounds like you admire your mom a lot,” Akira says. “Like she is your superhero.”

  “She is. And she understands me better than anyone.” And just like that, my mother’s disappointed face flashes through my mind and her words echo through my head: I feel like I don’t know you at all. My light, fizzy feeling deflates. I stare up at those little flickers of sunlight again and try to brush the thought aside. “What about you?” I say, trying to direct our conversation elsewhere. “Any badass superheroes in your family?”

  “My ojisan,” he says.

  I turn to face him. “The one who owns the mochi stand?”

  “Yes. He started that stand from nothing. He’s always made mochi from scratch for our whole family. We’d get together before New Year’s and he’d try to show us how to do it so we would have a big batch for Oshogatsu.”

  “Ah, my dad makes mochi for my parents’ Oshogatsu party, too!” I exclaim.

  “Perhaps he would have been a better teacher than Ojisan,” Akira says, smiling ruefully. “He would always get upset with us for not doing it correctly—apparently, there is some very particular technique no one could get. No one except him. He was determined that every single piece would be perfect, so we would always end up redoing the whole batch several times.”

  “Doesn’t seem terribly efficient,” I say with a laugh. “But I respect his artistic integrity.”

  “Me too,” Akira says. “So, as soon as I was old enough, I asked if I could work for him at his mochi stand.”

  “Wait a minute.” I shake my head, goggling at him. “I thought you said you didn’t volunteer to dance around dressed as a giant piece of mochi!”

  “That came later,” he says, giving me a sheepish look. “At first, I had more of a, ah, standard job during spring, summer, and winter vacations. Taking orders and such.”

  “But still, you volunteered for something!” I say.

  “I did,” he says, nodding proudly. “And Ojisan’s budget was tight, so I was not even getting paid at first.”

  “Wow.” I cross my arms over my chest and study him. “What made you want to do that?”

  “Ojisan and I have always been close and I admired his passion, his dedication,” Akira says. His brow furrows and he gets that intense look in his eyes—which, I have to admit, I’m starting to find even more attractive than his dimple. “He loves everything about mochi—the craft of making it, the taste. The process that goes into it. The way it brings people joy. It all gives him so much life. I want to be around people who feel things that way. Who run toward their passions with so much commitment.”

  “Is that the way you run toward being a doctor, toward—what did you call it—the odd science of how the body works?”

  “Yes,” Akira says, nodding firmly. “I do not see the point of doing anything less.”

  “I want to find that passion,” I blurt out. I feel instantly embarrassed, saying something so personal, something that comes from so deep inside my gut. But now that I’ve said it, I might as well keep going. “I mean. Something that I can run toward in the same way. I want that for my future.”

  “You will find it,” he says, looking at me with earnest conviction. And something about the absolute certainty in his voice makes my heart flutter. “I have faith in you. In fact …” He studies me for a moment, his expression turning even more serious. “Let’s make that our mission this spring vacation. To figure out your future. That is our case we must solve—like on the American detective shows. And we will solve it before you have to go home.”

  “First you volunteer to work at your uncle’s mochi stand for no pay and now you’re volunteering to help some random American girl resolve her existential crisis?” I give him a teasing, incredulous look. “Are you for real?”

  “I’m real,” he says, giving me a puzzled look. “Though for this mission I should perhaps assume some very manly American detective name: Jack? Chris? Dirk?”

  “I like Akira,” I say—and then blush a little when I realize how that sounds.

  He gestures down the path of the bamboo grove, which seems to go on forever. “Shall we keep walking? See if we find any unicorns?”

  Hmm. I cast a sidelong glance at him as we resume our journey. A cute boy who I don’t want to stop talking to … and who, for whatever reason, seems to want to keep talking to me, even when I blurt out deeply personal sentiments that are probably best left inside my head?

  I think I already have found a unicorn.

  When we finally emerge from the bamboo forest, we’re both starving, so we trek back to the Arashiyama train station and grab some takoyaki from one of the bustling food stands. I was running late when I arrived at the station
this morning—and yes, okay, totally preoccupied, fizzing with anticipation over seeing Akira again—so I glossed over a lot of the atmosphere of the station. Now I allow myself to take a moment to breathe in the delicious mingling of food scents, to take note of the unaccompanied schoolchildren who are, once again, striding along with purpose.

  “Was that you when you were younger?” I say to Akira, nodding toward a resolute little boy with a gigantic backpack.

  “Yes, un,” he says, grinning. “But probably moving much slower because of all the medical texts I wanted to drag around with me.”

  I smile at the completely adorable image this conjures up and take a bite of takoyaki.

  “So good,” I say, my eyes nearly rolling into the back of my head as I inhale the savory concoction of batter and octopus. “My dad has a version of these at his restaurant. It’s cool to be able to just buy it at a train station.”

  “You do not have takoyaki stands in the States?” Akira says.

  “We have food trucks. Kind of the same thing? I mean, it’s not hard to find Japanese food in LA—we have whole sections of the city dedicated to it, even. But it’s cool to be …” I gesture around. “Surrounded by all these food scents that are so much a part of my soul. Like they’re sewn into the fabric of everybody’s everyday life. I like being able to get takoyaki as easily as I can get french fries.”

  Akira smiles. “What is it like being here as—what do you say? The opposite of your mother, who is Japanese from Japan.”

  “Japanese American?” I say, laughing. “I mean, I suppose it’s interesting.” I stop and think about it for a moment. My first couple days here, I was too discombobulated and out of place to even think much about that question. But between the girls in their colorful yukata and this wealth of familiar food scents, I feel like I’m starting to locate little pieces of myself, and it makes me feel buoyed, moved—and curious to explore more. “There are things that are so familiar to me—like this.” I hold up my stick with its two remaining takoyaki balls. “But the, like, locational fabric around them is so different. It’s a weird mishmash of feeling like there are these important ‘home’ touchstones, but they’re wrapped up in the unfamiliar. And I really didn’t do enough research before coming here because my trip was a bit … last-minute. I still feel kind of off-kilter and out of place.”