Japan-U.S. Relations

Miyabi latched onto Sally and gave the American girl a really tight squeeze, inadvertently showing off a little bit of her added sumo muscle as she hugged Sally—and maybe also showing off the extra three or four pounds of pudgy padding she had added since starting to train. She was looking and feeling more and more like a sumo wrestler every day. She wondered if it showed in the way she carried herself, if Sally had noticed it...

Sally squeezed Miyabi back, and Miyabi would let out a happy little squeaking sound as the two of them both hugged each other really tightly, their bodies smooshing together as they did. After a few seconds, Miyabi would let go and pull back a little. When Sally asked her if she wanted to talk about something, Miyabi would pause for a second, then remember what she had talked with Akashi about a few weeks earlier. A blush came to her face as she thought about that.

She wasn't going to come right out and say that, or ask for that. That would be weird. She didn't even know if she really wanted to do that yet...

"Umm, ah...I want to, uh, hang out with Sally-chan! You want to eat, maybe?" Miyabi would ask, bouncing on the balls of her feet a little. "I think we could talk more, about, umm...our match, and other matches, and things. And eat good food, too!" Miyabi did think it would be fun to talk about their match. Now they could tell each other all the things they had said, what they had been thinking, what they had been feeling. Miyabi was wondering what all had been going through Sally's head during the spanking duel.

"Oh, yeah, sure!" Sally said, cracking a smile as she pulled back from Miyabi. Eating! Catching up! She felt like she hadn't done anything like that since... well, actually, she had just done it very recently. It had been nice. But that wasn't the point--she was meeting with someone she liked and going out to get food with 'em. This day was looking up already!

"Alright, miss soon-to-be-sumo!" Sally said, putting her hands on her hips. "Where do you wanna go to grab somethin' to eat?"

Miyabi was happy that Sally seemed to be happy. She still wasn't too good on reading the more complex expressions on the American's face, and still struggled some with the language, but she knew enough of both to recognize how sweet Sally was. Miyabi was glad to have found such a sincere, well-intentioned, and really cute friend!

"Oh, where to eat? Umm...where? Uh..." Miyabi paused for a second to think, crossing her arms in front of her chest. She had some ideas, but she wanted to be sure to go somewhere that Sally liked, too. "Uh, what restaurants Sally-chan likes? A, uh, place to eat...big without stopping?" Miyabi wasn't quite certain how to describe an all-you-can-eat buffet in English yet.

"Sushi, maybe? Or other things?"

"Sure, let's do an all-you-can-eat buffet!" Sally said with a big ole' grin, taking Miyabi's hand and making her way for the exit. "Sushi is fine by me if y'all wanna eat it."

A cab was called, a city traversed, a sushi place was decided on, and the guests were seated. Sally had to admit, her stomach was kinda grumbly--little bit of food would do her good!

Miyabi was pretty sure that “buffet” was the word that she was trying to find when she was fishing around in her mind for what that sort of place was called in English. She had heard it somewhere before. When Sally agreed to her suggestion, Miyabi would grin and giggle, squeezing Sally’s hand as they would head for the door and then go to get a taxi cab to take them to a sushi place. “Yay!” Miyabi knew a few of them in the area—she had always loved sushi, and had grown up only a few miles away from the AFW arena—and so, once they were on the road, she would direct the driver to her favorite one.

It wasn’t a huge restaurant, though it wasn’t tiny, either. There was a big counter which displayed all manner of sushi, sashimi, and other traditional Japanese foods covering most of one side of the establishment, with several tables of various sizes set up in front of it. Taking up a full half of the restaurant, though, was one of Miyabi’s favorite setups ever: the waterborne sushi conveyor belt. In the center was a channel of water, populated by dozens of little boats, each of which held three plates of sushi. Around the channel were seats for diners, who could freely take the plates of sushi that they thought looked most appetizing from the boats. When the sushi was depleted, it would be replenished by chefs working in the center of the big oval.

“Yay! This is great, Sally-chan! Time for eating, yeah!” Miyabi would exclaim happily.