- 21 May 2003
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- 4,404
I lived and loved my girlfriend Yoshiko for over a year. The plan was after my last year in the Navy , she would come to Maine to marry me. When the time came and everything was ready for her to come , she suddenly had a ton of excuses and after 3 months of trying to convince her , I gave up. I think the worse thing I did was to not teach her any English and to prepare her for the long trip from Japan to Maine alone. I had spent all my money on an apartment & vehicle and could not afford to go back to travel with her. I will confess the 50 person party was spread over about 10 hours because the bar could only hold 35 people at a time , LOL. I could write a book about the bar , which was almost like the TV show "Cheers". We had lots of wild adventures and strange characters who worked there and the customers who were regulars there. The owner (we called him "Master) was young , rich and well educated and a "Bruce Lee" of kendo. We had several fights involving knives where he took on and beat 3 or 4 opponents at once. The bar was called an underground/illegal bar because we did not close until 5AM and often was a hangout for low tier Yakuza. Although I didn't know it when I met her , my girlfriend who was from a tiny town 3 train hours away from Fukuoka was very rich. Her dad was a CEO of some big company and when he died , he left the family over a million dollar in insurance money. Her older brother was in banking & investment and bought in more money to the family. My job and position on base working in HFDF gave me a lot of time off so I got to travel all over Kyushu with my girl picking up the tab. My last 6 months there we rented a nice house in Fukuoka and I felt like a king.