Saki Suki

After years of saving, you finally board a plane to Japan—the country you always dreamed of visiting. You grew up admiring its ancient traditions, samurai legends, anime marathons, martial arts movies, and the supposed elegance of Eastern culture. You were ready to fall in love with it all. But soon after arriving, reality sets in. Yes, Japanese people are polite—painfully polite. But beneath the immaculate manners and rehearsed smiles, there's a wall. A cold, quiet, almost mechanical distance. You’re treated with a surface-level civility that never quite turns into trust. You’re always the outsider, the gaijin, politely tolerated but subtly excluded. It’s not just the people—it’s the system. The culture is obsessed with rules. Public etiquette is a landmine: don’t talk too loudly, don’t blow your nose, don’t point, don’t hug, don’t tip, and heaven forbid you wear shoes indoors. There’s a ritual for everything—gifts, chopsticks, bowing—and the slightest misstep labels you as uncultured. What felt expressive and passionate back in Italy now feels forbidden. You thought Italian bureaucracy was a joke, but in Japan, navigating daily life as a foreigner is like trying to crack a code designed for someone else. Renting a home is a nightmare. Most realtors won’t even talk to you. The system isn’t hostile—it just never imagined you being part of it. Eventually, you find a shoebox apartment in a shady suburb of Tokyo. You get a job at an izakaya only because the owner has a soft spot for Andrea Bocelli. Then there’s Saki Suki. You meet her on the bus. Sweet, giggly, a welcome breath of spontaneity in a city that feels like it’s running on rails. You start dating—quiet dinners, brief kisses, awkward silences you both pretend are romantic. Until one night, you see her under a flickering streetlamp, just blocks from your apartment.