• I went to an international high school, so naturally my first boyfriend was a foreigner who shared different cultural values. It was exciting to know each other more, but I was more fascinated about learning his language and country. He was a Japanese, and I must say he was a lot of help in preparing for my Japanese class. (Dear reader, if you are learning a second language, get a boyfriend who's native to the language. You'll get an instant A+ in your language class.)

    We had many common interests: PS2, piano, classical music, and badminton. We both played an instrument, so practice rooms became our favorite dating spot. They had personal locks, sound proof walls, a piano, few chairs, and adjustable lights. It's a secluded area, and you get the picture. We both played piano, so we'd often play duets (for 4 hands), and he'd play his tuba for me. We'd get intimate sometimes, and we had our first kiss after dating for 3 months.

    During that 3 months, my Japanese became more fluent, since we called each other every night. My parents were horrified by the phone bill so I got a lot of scoldings, but I didn't care much for the sake of love.

    However, conflict broke out when I started to come back on my senses. After months of Japanese listening training with my boyfriend, I could actually understand what the Japanese kids talk to each other. Many Asian kids like to make communities of the same nationality, and they'd have their favorite hut, or staircase to hangout. I was passing by the Japanese hut, and I felt the strange ambiance; they were gossiping about me. I still remember their conversation, not word to word, but here it goes:

    "ano ko yamaken* no kanojo desho?" (that's yamaken's girlfriend, right?)
    "e, dare dare?" (huh? who?)
    "asoko" (there.)

    (*Yamaken: It's an abbreviation of the name of my bf, Kentaro Yamada. Japanese read their surname first, and then the given name. They took the first kanji of the first name and the last. Yama=mountain, Ken=health)

    I wasn't trying to pry into their conversation, but they were talking about me, so I sat on a bench nearby, and listened. The girls probably thought I didn't understand their language.

    "Hey, they kissed each other few days ago right?"
    "Already?"
    "I mean, ken told that to me himself, and they did that in the practice room."
    "So perverted..." and so on.

    The conversation briefed about every intimate thing we did, and I was very embarrassed. He definitely didn't have any privacy, and I was simply afraid how much these pack of strangers know about me. So I did a little experiment. I went to the movies with him, and passed by the same hut the next day. Guess what? Another briefing.

    That was when I started to discover many of his flaws. I really didn't pay attention to his manners when we were dating, but he became disgusting when I started to realize what was going on. His nails were long, and had dirt in-between. One time when we went to watch a concert, he took off his shoes, and his barefoot was almost touching the head of the front seat people. (The theater had steep stairs.) I felt sorry for them. There were many other things, but if I start listing them it'd be pages long. So without telling him the reason, I broke up with him.

    That's how my first love ended. I needed my space, and breaking up was the best solution to claim my privacy back. However, I still thank him from my heart, because I really did get an A+ that semester for my Japanese class.