A perfectly normal, slightly off-kilter holiday diary about meeting up with a friend to talk

I had an irresistible craving for steak over the weekend, and while I was thinking about going to eat alone, I suddenly asked a local friend who lives nearby and went to the same kindergarten: "I'm thinking of having steak at
Takerutomorrow night, want to join?" It turned out she had also been thinking about eating meat, so we went together. When we got to Takeru, I lined up small plates with various concoctions of salt, garlic, ponzu, soy sauce, and spices, obsessively mixing them to enjoy different flavors, while my friend, despite the abundance of seasonings, chose one flavor she liked and poured it directly onto her steak. We both have quirky ways of eating. We talked about how Takeru's paper loyalty cards were gone and replaced by an app, and she looked at my puffy face—I had been sleeping until 6 PM—laughed just a little, said "You sure slept a lot," and moved on to the next topic. She doesn't ask why I slept until 6 PM, nor is she surprised by such trivial things. We polished off our steaks while I gave her advice on her coworker who sits next to her—a man who clearly doesn't bathe enough and whom she hates more than anyone else on Earth—and who she said disinfects his phone receiver every morning. "Disinfecting it just once in the morning is pointless. It would be better to do it every time, but you have to worry about what people think. At the very least, you should add a round during lunch break," I advised.We decided to grab some tea and moved to Royal Host.
"Royal Host is head and shoulders above other family restaurants."
"It's on a completely different level."
"It's not called 'Royal' for nothing."
"They even serve tonkatsu on a wire rack."
We said these things to each other while looking at the menu for a long time, but we always end up ordering the drink bar. Come to think of it, because of the state of emergency due to COVID-19 and the continued self-restraint from going out, it had been a while since we came to Royal Host, and we were excited.

After a while, my friend, who had ordered the small steak, moved on to the pancake stage early. Since my steak was medium, I ordered my pancakes an hour and a half after she had finished hers. We don't worry about each other's pace and stick to our own.
About 15 years ago, we discovered that the best way to eat Royal Host's three-stack pancakes is to divide the butter on top into three, spread it evenly across all three pancakes, apply maple syrup over the whole thing, and then stack them back up to eat. We've been doing it that way ever since.
"It's so much easier once you find the answer to what's best for everything," she said as she divided the butter into three.
The conversation turned to likes and dislikes.
"You know how there are people who are incredibly nice, but you just hate them?" my friend said.
"Totally. There are times when everyone else loves someone, but you're the only one who hates them," I replied.
"Conversely, there are people who have terrible personalities, but you still find yourself liking them," I said.
"That happens too," my friend said.
"I'm confident in my judgment of likes and dislikes," I said.
"Well, obviously. You're the one who decides what you like and dislike. We take responsibility for what we decide ourselves," my friend said.
"But you know, that person I hated who recommended the movie


Midsommar

—they've actually been a bit better lately. I was wondering if my judgment in classifying them as someone I hate was wrong..." I said.
"That's not it. You wouldn't be wrong there. They're just acting a bit better, but they still have one foot in the 'people I hate' category, so they'll easily revert to being someone you hate at the slightest provocation," my friend stated firmly.
She continued.
"There are so many people in the world who can't ask the guy they like what he thinks of them or if he has any intention of getting married, or who can't tell the person involved about the things that are bothering them. Like salarymen who agonize over not being able to tell their boss their own opinions. There are so many people in the world who don't say what they think or don't ask what they want to know. I hate those kinds of people."
My friend said.
"You know, people have told me that it's not that they don't say what they want to say, but that they can't, and it's not that they don't ask, but that they can't. Someone once told me, 'People like you who can say what they want are special.'"
I said, and my friend replied, "I guess so. I've been told that many times too."
"Also, it seems like there are things you shouldn't say or shouldn't think for most people in the world. I don't have that. It's free to think whatever you want, right?"I said, and my friend replied, "Exactly. So, there's no rule that says you can't hate this person, which is why we take responsibility for deciding who we like and dislike ourselves, without being bound by anyone."I see. When you think about it that way, having people you hate means you're making a choice you're responsible for, and it starts to feel like something precious. My friend showed me that again today. I'm grateful. I want to continue choosing my likes and dislikes with responsibility.After that, while drinking Coke Zero and rosehip tea, we talked about The Walking Dead, as we do every time, and had the thousandth conversation about "who would I follow, and how would I survive?"If I were a female character, I'd admire becoming strong by being with a strong man like Rosita, but I think I'd rather be friends with Carol, who is smart and the strongest woman. However, my friend said she would definitely follow Rick. She said that even though Rick is a leader who sometimes slaughters many people without hesitation, he can instantly prioritize in any crisis, and he always puts protecting his son and his companions first.
I was convinced by my friend's choice, whose argument that it's worst to have your priorities waver is always consistent.
Then, for some reason, the conversation turned to "What would you do if you were stranded on a desert island with the person you hate most in the world?"
My friend said, "After they catch a fish, I'd hit them hard on the head with a rock to knock them out, steal the fish, and run to the other side of the island."
"You could just use them to your advantage, making them catch fish for you every time—without having to offer your body, just by showing a glimpse of your thigh," I said, speaking freely as if it were a purely fictional scenario.
"I hate even that kind of interaction. I don't even want to tell them to go catch a fish," she said.
"Then why not kill them and eat them?"
I suggested, as someone who loves foreign movies and dramas, keeping it strictly hypothetical.
"If rescuers came right away, it would be obvious I killed them, and even though I don't care what people think of me, it would be tough to live forever with the label of 'Hannibal' attached to me by others," my friend said seriously.
"I'd visit you in prison every week and call you Dr. Lecter. I wonder if you can have long conversations in prison," we joked.
Then, I talked about how I've been collecting gear for solo camping in the mountains lately. My friend, who is a complete indoor person, said, "Norimaki-chan, you're an indoor person with a weak constitution, yet you sometimes want to do such hardcore outdoor stuff," and gave me some more helpful advice: "In extreme situations, humans are scarier than zombies, so be careful." I replied, "I know. I want to go somewhere without people for a while, and I can't go abroad right now, so in the end, solo camping in the mountains is all I have."
We store up the strength to live by talking endlessly about these seemingly trivial things (we ended up talking for six hours that day).

It's not that we never have real consultations where we say, "This happened and it's so tough..." and have the other listen, but these trivial conversations feel like a much more meaningful use of time.
We can safely reveal the parts of ourselves that are a bit out of sync with the world. She's someone who doesn't completely reject my slightly strange, off-kilter parts, but instead gives me an even stranger, more unexpected response. And she feels the same way about me.
Sleeping until 6 PM on a holiday, secretly disinfecting the phone receiver used by someone I hate since long before the pandemic, saying things like "They're a good person but I hate them" or "Why not kill and eat them?"—these are things I can't easily say in front of other people, and eating pancakes at the timing I want is hard to do when I'm with others.

We are perfectly normal human beings who have many things we can't say or do because we care about what others think, but I was grateful for the person and the time I could safely share even those contradictions with. I think I can make it through this week.

The photo is from a trip to Taiwan I took with that friend a long time ago, taken when we were eating side-by-side at a solo hot pot restaurant even though we were there together. I learned later that people in the world don't really choose such places and eat different hot pots separately when they come to Taiwan with other women.

※ I named this friend "Shime-chan," meaning "the girl who shows me things." I call the meetings where I meet up with Shime-chan to talk aimlessly the "Yasa-gure Kai" (Grumpy Meeting), and I sometimes write about Shime-chan (hashtag Shime-chan) and the Yasa-gure Kai.