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I think I just unlocked a repressed memory where I met a girl that was suspiciously similar to Pomu over a decade ago in Japan lol. Warning for the massive wall of text.
>2009 and I just graduated high school, I was 16
>Parents took me on a trip to Japan since they know I'm a massive weeb and wanted to celebrate
>We were walking through Akihabara browsing anime/weeb things and gundam stuff(my dad likes mecha)
>My mom said she was tired and wanted to visit a cafe she thought looked cute
>It was actually a maid cafe, their menu just had romaji instead of English translations so I assume they didn't get many foreigners.
>Mom thought it was adorable how all the girls wore frilly pink maid outfits and acted all bubbly and moe even though she doesnt really care for anime at all
>One of the girls working there clearly stood out because she was obviously not Japanese and her Japanese was mediocre at best(better than mine)
>The manager asked her in simple Japanese to take our orders and chat with us since she was the only one that spoke English
>She spoke English with a very slight accent when introducing herself, which was notable to me since it sounded familiar compared to the other Americans we met in Japan.
>We asked her where she was from and she mentioned the same state as us, and she also revealed she was near my age and kinda laughed at me for visiting a maid cafe with my parents, I cringed.
>She was working there part time because she spent all her money on the trip to get there and needed to pay for boarding and spending money for anime merch/idol concerts. She was only gonna be in Japan for the summer until the next school term started.
>We spent probably 15-20 minutes talking about anime and VN's and stuff. She gave me a lot of recs, though many of them turned out to be ecchi anime when I looked them up later. She was pretty much the first girl I ever got to talk about weeb shit with who seemed genuinely enthusiastic about it, I really admired it.
>At some point the manager called her over and she left along with a few other girls. A few minutes later they came back out dressed in kinda cheap looking idol costumes and got on stage announcing it was time for the mini concert.
>They sang Hare Hare Yukai and 2 idol/jpop songs I didn't recognize as I didn't really care for non-anime music at the time.
>During the whole thing she was very animated, the others were mostly in sync but obviously just doing their job the way they practiced it. Meanwhile the one white girl in the group was going all out every song and being kind of a dork waving her arms around and pretending she was a real idol. My mom thought it was cute how enthusiastic she was; I was kinda embarrassed for her due to being an edgy cynical teenager.
>As all of them were getting off stage she tripped on one of the microphone cords and nearly fell on top of another girl, catching herself on the girl's boobs with her hands. Might've been on purpose, or a staged joke they did every time.
>After the performance my parents tried to encourage me to go talk to her, they wanted me to get her number so we could become friends when she went back home since we were in the same age group and my parents knew I didn't have any friends back home.
>Me being the cringey autist that I was totally chickened out and didn't talk to her after that except to say goodbye when we paid our bill and were leaving. Even then my mom decided to do it herself and asked for her phone number to keep in touch while I was being an awkward retard.
>She miraculously gave me two different numbers, her Japanese temporary phone number and her American number for when she went back home, and said to call her if I wanted to go to a real idol concert with her and that I should visit that cafe again and she'd sing me another song before we leave Japan. I couldn't tell if she just felt sorry for me being gloomy and shy or she really wanted to be friends.
>I kinda started crushing on her for the next week or so. I got super embarrassed when my mom suggested taking my dad shopping while I could go visit the cafe alone before we left to say goodbye.
>I pussied out and just walked around Akihabara for an hour instead while pretending I did.
>When we left Japan my mom asked if I kept her phone number, I pretended I lost it.
>I didn't though, I was just too much of a coward to ever call or text her and with every passing day it made things more awkward so I just never contacted her again.
>I considered going to a few local cons to maybe meet her again but the thought of her grilling me on why I never talked to her made me pussy out of ever going to a con too.
>Eventually after years of feeling ashamed I kinda forgot about it and buried it under all the other thousands of times I made a fool of myself in social situations.
My life is filled with regret...she probably wasn't Pomu anyway...but now this memory is stuck in my head.
