At first I thought Honey Coming was just a candy with a weird name marketed toward hip, urban girls. Then I looked up the website and discovered Honey Coming was a dating show on Japanese TV, now defunct, in which two wacky actresses observe a couple on a first date and give advice to one of them. (While they are actually on the date? It is unclear.) When it was finally time to eat some Honey Coming, I brought the box to school, thinking I might distribute the candies amongst the teachers in my office, since they always leave little treats for me. When I opened the box, however, I noticed there were instructions on how to open the individually-wrapped candies, which gave me pause. I looked closer. Under the flap of each candy there were two sentences, one pink, one blue, prefaced with the kanji for woman and man. A fortune maybe? I was suddenly wary. I put the box away.

I am the master of observation now, after almost eight months here. It's kind of like how a blind person develops super-sharp hearing, the effect of moving to a place where for all intents and purposes you cannot read, speak or hear. I've learned to pick up on the smallest clues to figure out whether or not I'm on the right train, or standing in the correct line, or buying what I want at the grocery store. Traveling to an unknown town together with people who actually understand Japanese, I am at times better at navigating than they are because I spot things they don't. I'm like a detective, using the smallest bits of unconnected information to form theories and eventually discover a cohesive truth (such as: I think I just walked into the men's toilet -- yup, I did).

I was glad for this skill when I brought the candy to someone who could interpret the fortunes for me, as they turned out to be things like: "Take a picture of yourself blowing a kiss and send it to her" or "Give him a shoulder massage." Clearly, this is candy for sharing on a date. Horror crept over me as I imagined myself cheerfully distributing the candy among the teachers in my room and confusedly watching the jolly brass band teacher or the mousy chemistry teacher read instructions to feed me the candy or rub my toes. You know that feeling on the freeway when you start to change lanes and the person two lanes away does the same and when you realize it, you jerk back into your lane at the moment before impact, breathing hard and buzzing all over with the relief of danger averted? It was kind of like that.

Honey Coming is actually really good, soft, creamy squares of milk chocolate, some with a layer of strawberry-flavored white chocolate, so I don't mind in the least finishing it off myself. But who's going to rub my shoulders now?