The Pitfalls of Love, pt IV

So, Yumi and Kyoko were both busts. But at the same time, I was also in contact with at third woman, named “Mai.”

“Why the quotation marks?” you ask? Good question. I’ll get to that.

“Mai” introduced herself to me as a 35-year old running a small Korean food import company in Shimizu. In this first mail, she gave an e-mail address from work, which she said was ok to to send to any time, even during work hours. We exchanged a few mails, one of which included a picture of herself at an outdoor cafe. The photo wasn’t too high quality, making it seem real enough. And she was pretty to boot.

After a few days, “Mai” suggested that we meet for dinner in the near future. And, as she was doing fine financially with her business, she would pay. I laughed, and said that she didn’t have to pay, but I would be happy to meet her.

Great, she said. “But,” she continued, “I can’t keeping using my work address, and I don’t know you well enough yet to give you my cell address, but if you register with this site…”

I’m sure you all get the picture. After having just been through the same rigmarole with Kyoko and Yumi, I was irritated (previous posts, and paragraph 3 above). I sent a mail back that I would not use these routing sites, because they were just deai-kei traps, and that if I continued using it to communicate, it would cost me a lot. No dice.

“I’m pretty sure it’s free,” “Mai” said. “But if it’s not, I’ll pay you back after we start meeting.”

Indeed.

I decided to take another look at her company’s website, the link to which was in her e-mails’ signature. It was there that I found out something interesting about “Mai.”

I know a lot of kanji, but not all, and it gets much harder with names. I was pretty sure her name read “Mai,” but when I typed it up in my computer, the right kanji didn’t come up, so I thought it was a rare configuration (not uncommon nowadays), and so addressed her in katakana (マイ).

Anyway, her company’s website turned out to be totally dodgy, but there was a “president’s blog” link, and when I clicked, there it was. Her name kanji didn’t read Mai, they read Maho! Man, did I feel stupid, and more than a little PO’d.

So I sent her a mail asking if she was for real, why didn’t she say anything when I was making a mistake with her name. Needless to say, she didn’t reply.

Bye bye Mai/Maho.

Sigh. It was at this point that on my online profile, I added a warning at the end of the little blurb on myself. “If you are planning to make me use a site to route my e-mails to you, don’t even bother contacting me.”

The inquiries have since dropped off dramatically…

(to be continued)

Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 General Trackback URL for this entry