No prize for guessing the choice of image for this post.
Recently, I received an Instagram message from long-time friend, S. I first met S when I was in polytechnic. We weren’t doing the same major nor were we in the same faculty and we weren’t even in the same class for Japanese language lessons. But we somehow met during one of the classes which I don’t even remember how.
When Japanese class first started, I remember seeing 4 rows of students in my class on the first day of lesson but 2 years later, there were just 4 students. I don’t remember exactly the reason but I believe our small class once skipped lesson and we decided to go for make up class with the other existing group. To our surprise, the other group was huge. If my memory didn’t fail me, they had more than 10 people and among whom was S. At that lesson, our teacher taught us the meaning to Utada Hikaru’s First Love. But that’s besides the point.
S was a beautiful girl. She still is, that’s probably why she works for our world-class airline. And in my memory, she was always smiling. Unfortunately for me, since we weren’t in the same class nor group, we never really got very chummy although upon graduation, we did meet a couple of times.
So that’s the story to my few contact with S.
Because we haven’t contacted for so long, I was surprised when I received a message from her. Normally, if someone whom I hadn’t contacted for over 10 years suddenly asks me, “Are you still in Japan?” I would suspect they want me to get something for them. But I didn’t think that of S, because after all, she’s a flight attendant. She can get anything she wants herself in almost any part of the world. Then again, there must be a reason for her to suddenly remember me and decide to drop me a message.
So I asked, “What’s up?”
She said she was talking to her friend that noon and somehow my name was mentioned, so she thought to send her regards.
That was a very nice gesture and I appreciate it but that made me more confused because, why would my name come up, unless the friend also knows me which should mean I know that friend. But if we also know each other, she wouldn’t have referred to that friend as “my friend.”
For easy following, let’s call her friend “F” (for “friend”).
It turns out that I don’t know actually know F. But since F was going to take the JLPT test, S casually mentioned me being in Japan. And for some reason, F decided to ask S what my name was, and they realized that F follows my blog. So if you’re reading this, F, all the best to your JLPT!
This isn’t the first time this has happened. A few years ago, my ex-colleague M suddenly messaged me saying the new girl they hired knows me and I was like, “How?” And she related a similar story that they told the new girl about “this guy who used to work here moved to Japan” and the girl asked M my name, and then they realized she follows my blog too.
A similar thing happened with a very close friend G, whose friend who went to Tottori Prefecture to do the JET Program also used to read my blog. I’m not sure if she still does, but I do know that she got married and moved to Boston.
I used to imagine when something like that happens some day, I would have a lot more readers than I do now. But still, it’s nice to know that my followers and I have mutual friends.
