After I finished college in the early 90s in East Asian Studies, I decided that I wanted to go to work in Tokyo. My first job was at a large mercantile trading company with a huge headquarter office in the central business district. The office was traditionally configured in a large open plan with more senior staff by the windows and new recruits like me arranged along long tables covered in paperwork and phones. One perk of the job was finding myself surrounded by young Japanese girls called OLs short for office ladies. OLs are considered like flowers that brighten up the office, do the clerical work, and more often than not marry the single men as they rise up the ranks. In those days OLs didn't expect to get promoted very far nor work for very long. Only the old maids stayed - and many times these older women kept everything working but received little or no recognition.
One of the younger girls that worked on my floor was Yuriko. She has a stunningly beautiful pixie-like face with a small pouting mouth that always seemed to show her two front teeth. Otherwise she was typical - on the smaller side, with small breasts and a round bottom that gradually morphed into legs a little on the thick side. I didn't give her too much though since there were plenty of attractive women around and I didn't want to go hunting at my workplace. But over several months I came to appreciate Yuriko's fast wit, helpful attitude and caring nature. She confided in me that she thirsted for adventure to travel and live abroad and get away from her mundane life. It crossed my mind that marrying a foreigner would be one route to achieve that goal.
All went smoothly at first but that was about to change one April night during Cherry Blossom season. As is typical of that time of year, after work our whole office decamped to a large mat under some particularly fine cherry trees by a canal. Beer and snacks flowed late into the night while everyone got progressively drunker. When it came time to leave, I ended up going to the subway with Yuriko and a few other coworkers since we lived in the same general direction. Yuriko lived far out of the city one of the many long commuter lines. By the time we got to the connecting terminal station it was just the two of us and her last train had just left. For me that was not an issue since I lived nearby. But Yuriko was very upset since taking a taxi home would cost the equivalent of $500 and she didn't have that kind of money to burn and while hotels were cheaper they were not somewhere that a young single woman would find in the middle of the night. So off the cuff I offered to let her stay at my place on a pull out sofa. She protested at first but in the end and a little embarrassed said ok if I insisted.
