Rina Hashimoto Made Me Fall for Japan Twice

People ask me sometimes—given how much I go on about Japan, Tokyo, Sailor Moon, the whole aesthetic package—whether my dream women must therefore be Japanese. And I always had to pause and admit, quietly and with some embarrassment, that my actual crushes were Selena Gomez, Scarlett Johansson, Kate Upton. Not a single Japanese woman among them. It was a contradiction I’d been carrying around for years. Maybe I loved the idea of Japan more than I loved actual Japan. Maybe I was just a hentai otaku fixated on a fantasy of East Asia rather than the real, complicated, human thing.

Then I saw Rina Hashimoto on one of those photography Tumblrs, and the whole internal debate collapsed instantly.

Her smile. The deep tan of her skin. Dark eyes, summer-bleached hair. Something in her face that was both entirely specific to her and perfectly in tune with everything I’d ever loved about the aesthetic I’d been chasing for twenty years. I kept saying her name to myself like I was trying to memorize it before it disappeared. Rina Hashimoto. Rina Hashimoto. She has an Instagram and I went through the whole thing in one sitting without a trace of shame. Because of her, I fell in love with Japan a second time—and this time it had absolutely nothing to do with anime.