a loose , more casual recording of events might go merely something like this : once upon a time , there were a bunch of western young men and bunch of japanese girls ; the nave innocent american one , who happened to be black , was cut out of the action through sophistication and word play ; the infinitely cynical and devious american one briefly toyed with one ( eri ) and was getting involved with another ( akemi ) ; the german , interested only in the asocial one ( who was gone that weekend to visit her mothers family in pusan ) , played social games for amusement sake and to keep attention distracted from that last .