Japanese, New Roommate, and Dancing

Late Morning Nap

I am Japanese-American and going to BYU. Lindsay is told by the management that we will be getting a new roommate. A Japanese man. None of us know why they are having a man live with us.

So this guy and his parents show up and he starts moving in, at which point we realize that our apartment is full and we don't have a place for him to sleep. So our questions go from, "Why did they put a boy into an apartment of girls?" to "Why did they put a boy into a full apartment of girls?" But I am relieved to discover that this guy speaks English and not just Japanese.

I go off with my family, where I talk to my sister about some story I wrote that featured a character based off of her. And my parents want to see my old stories, to see if any of them reflect my Japanese heritage at all. They don't- all the stories are very American in situations, settings, and conventions.

There is also a flashback where I am canoeing with my parents and we get into an argument and I push Mom out of the canoe, then dive in and save her.

Because I have not properly appreciated my Japanese heritage, my parents pull me out of BYU, which I am apparently attending. And I have to move out of my apartment, which makes room for the new roommate. But it turns out that he is only there to make a documentary about me getting pulled from BYU, and everybody knew that it would happen except for me.

Then I read in a Japanese newspaper that he is a retard- the English word retard, in our alphabet, actually appears in the middle of a bunch of Japanese type.

I go to look for some sort of blue collar job, and the retarded documentary guy is there. He gives me a tip on how to solve something that I was given to fix as a sort of try-out before they interview me. It works.

Then he turns into a blond, blue-eyed guy. And I discover that my parents had used his sister to humiliate me before, when I was about 13.

We go to a concert on a date, where I discover that he is a well-known, gifted songwriter because they play some of his songs there. And he asks me to dance. So we do.

Then some other guy asks me to dance, and I go along even though I don't want to, then leave him to go back to my Japanese white guy date, who is no longer retarded, and who I like very much at this point.