There was a free bus from Fremantle Station that stopped at various places around the city, and I rode it to the harbor area. I scanned the faces of the other passengers, thinking that my two friends might be riding the same bus, and found myself eye to eye with an elderly lady who was sitting right next to me. She glanced down at the front of my jacket and shyly said something—rapid-fire English—that I couldn't quite catch. I thought she said, "Is that real sushi?"

"No, it's a . . . model," I replied in my lame English. "Japanese brooch. Isn't it funny?"

The old lady smiled sweetly and spoke again, more slowly this time, so I could understand.

"Oh, yes. It's very nice. I love sushi!"

It was worth bringing my little souvenirs all the way from Japan just to be on the receiving end of that kindly smile. Even after I'd gotten off, the old lady was still beaming at me though the window as the bus pulled away, and I was feeling a happy glow. It would have been a different story entirely if I'd been wearing real sushi on the front of my jacket; maybe this was why people find the fake stuff so useful.

From the bus stop I set out in the direction of a McDonald's near the beach; according to a blog that Zhang had found, our signpost was supposed to be somewhere around there. Circling the burger shop, I spied something standing near the water that looked like it might be the sign. As I walked toward it I passed a tall Asian-looking woman. She must have noticed my sushi pins, because she was staring at my chest. When she lifted her eyes, a faint smile was playing on her lips.

She stopped. I smiled back at her and walked on toward the signpost. As I'd expected, the sign said "The Old Port." It seemed bigger than it had looked in the website photo, but the colors and lettering were just the same as those I'd seen on my computer screen. Now I could relax a little. I checked my watch and saw that our rendezvous wasn't for another three hours. I was thinking about killing some time taking in the local sights when I was suddenly aware of someone watching me.

I casually turned around and saw the tall girl I'd just passed walking away, her long hair swaying and spreading in the ocean breeze. It must have been her eyes I'd felt on my back. She'd probably just turned her back to me—that's why her hair was billowing in the wind. She'd been watching me until I turned around.

I had no idea why. Sad to say, I wasn't handsome enough to turn the head of a woman in her mid-twenties (or so she looked), and plastic sushi might be unusual but it wouldn't get that kind of attention. As she walked off into the distance I was left with a new mystery, one that turned up right at the gateway to an uncharted land.

Three hours later the mystery was solved. I'd been waiting at the signpost since half an hour before the appointed time when someone finally appeared, and I knew at a glance who it was. A pudgy white guy wearing a trench coat and carrying a sizable folding chessboard under one arm came straight toward me, grinning. Behind his eyeglasses, his blue eyes were brimming with curiosity. This could be no one but Scott.

"You must be Shota. I'm glad to meet you."

He ran up to me holding out his right hand. I pointed to my telltale sushi pins and shook his hand, all smiles.

"One of these is for you."

Scott dithered for a second and then chose the squid. Pinned to the collar of his trench coat, the brooch wasn't quite in synch with the look he was going for, but he was good-natured enough to wear it anyway. With that, any nervousness we might have felt at meeting for the first time disappeared.

At twelve o'clock sharp Zhang arrived, climbing out of a taxi that had stopped on the street and walking straight toward us. Scott and I both turned. He thought it was someone else and looked away, but I'd already figured it out. She was the one we'd been waiting for.

I called out to her.

"Hello from before!"

The third member of our group was none other than the girl with the strikingly long black hair. Like me, she must have come to confirm the location of our rendezvous when we'd passed each other three hours before. Scott looked from one of us to the other, puzzled. Then Zhang took her hand out of the pocket of her leather jacket, and his confusion gave way to surprise and delight.

A gold-colored coin glittered between her thin fingers. With graceful movements she spun the coin around and around, making it move from finger to finger like a living thing. It was an amazing trick, worthy of a magician, and the glittering golden thing dancing between her fingers was, of course, the one-roger coin.

"Nice to meet you, Scott. I'm Erica Zhang—call me Eric."

She spoke to Scott first, in English. A little strong-willed, maybe, but she had an utterly charming smile.

"Oh . . . oh!" said Scott, politely shaking her outstretched hand. All at once, he seemed to be at a loss for words. I spoke in Japanese.

"Nice to meet you. I thought you said you were a guy."

She seemed older than me so I should have been using more respectful language, but I decided to stick with our customary mode of communication. She replied in Japanese, quite amiably.

"Not true. You said, ‘You're a guy, right?' and I said ‘Apparently.'"
"You mean you were pretending to be a guy?"
 "Well, partly." She broke into a sheepish grin. "I'm no good at speaking Japanese like a girl."

It seemed Zhang had learned Japanese the way men speak it. When she'd lived in Japan she'd picked up her Japanese from her older brothers. The adults eventually told her she should speak more like a girl, but, being a child, Zhang couldn't accept the notion that boys and girls were supposed to speak differently. As a result, even now she was better at speaking Japanese like a male than like a female.

"On the Net it's just sort of easier to be a man. Some guys won't leave you alone once they find out you're a woman."

That's why she used the name Zhang at first. When someone asked her first name, she dropped the final "a" from Erica and used Eric instead.

Scott spoke in Japanese.

"It's a mystery that neither Shota or I ever solved, isn't it. We had absolutely no idea you were this beautiful woman."

Zhang smiled shyly.

"I wasn't trying to trick you, but it seemed more fun not to say anything before we met."
"Oh, this is fun all right. A very pleasant surprise."

We stayed there for a while, chatting and watching the ocean. The wind off the sea had just about frozen my bones by the time Eric suggested we move on.