Couple in Tokyo: The Wasabi diaries.

The plane lands and the anxiety kicks in. This is Johanna’s first trip to Japan; a trip she’s been waiting for quite some time. Johanna is a big fan of the Japanese culture and has been trying to get her hands on some good merchandise to resale back home in her ecommerce website.

At the hotel, she decides to take a stroll around the capital – Tokyo. She is completely baffled by the lights and the bold culture around anime, western pop culture and the food scene. So much walking, eventually makes her hungry for some real sushi, so she decides to make a pit stop at a well-known restaurant that specializes in sea urchin (Uni) rolls, in hopes to meet-up with her friend who is currently doing an internship at Ogilvy. In the meantime, she walks in and takes a sit at the sushi bar – it seems like the “local” thing to do, but as she reads the menu she can’t help to hear the conversation going on next to her from a group of American guys. These guys were sticking out like a sour thumb, being louder than the locals and daring each other to eat sushi rolls unknown to them. Johanna found this behavior to be a little obnoxious – well, very obnoxious.

It wasn’t long when one of them turned around and asked her where she was from; Johanna, to avoid the conversation, quickly made an accent and said she was from Sweden – but that turned out to be worse, as the American fella thought it was nice to meet a Swedish girl. Johnna thought of a great idea to stop this guy on his tracks and asked him his name, to which he politely answered: “Connor. My name is Connor, and yours?” Johanna found that moment to be rapidly pleasant, but her mind was already set with her evil plans to dare Connor to eat the green paste sitting on his plate. Connor tried smelling it to sense what it was, and offered it back to one of his buddies who were chanting for Connor, to build peer pressure. Johanna interrupted Connor once again by asking if he was afraid, which quickly led to the ingestion of the entire wasabi paste by Connor – a move he would immediately regret.

As Connor choked and coughed in despair, Johanna casually stood up and left the restaurant, texting her friend to meet her at another place.

The night went by and Johanna and her friend found themselves at a robot nightclub drinking colorful cocktails. As they walked-out, they headed to the subway where they realized they didn’t have any money to pay for; so in a drunk attempt for resolution, both, Johanna and her friend decided to jump the turnstile. A clumsy attempt that made Johanna hit her elbow as she fell in front of two American guys who happened to watch alongside a group of Japanese locals who also watched in serious disapproval. One of the Americans quickly apologized to the locals and mentioned he would pay for their subway fare. It turned out to be Connor and a friend.

Connor told Johanna, as he swiped his subway card on the turnstile, that he should’ve left her there for what she did to him, but that she is lucky that the spicy wasabi helped him cleanse his palate from that awful Uni (sea urchin) roll he had eaten earlier – Johanna laughed.

It was then, that Johanna and Connor finally put their guard down and had a nice conversation in the subway. Before Connor got off, they exchanged numbers. They continued to meet each other regularly during the trip, growing fond of each other to the point that eventually led to a kiss. Johanna and Connor continued to date in the United States, where Connor eventually moved to be closer to her in order to carry out a serious relationship.