?.

Aside from the nature of their relationship, culturally Japan is less about words and more about actions when it comes to express love. Being able to look past the expression on their face and reading their true mind and heart is important to understanding the gestures of anyone Japanese, and is acknowledged as common-knowledge. Also, their culture in general makes most people embarrassed of expressing their feelings to anyone.

For drama purposes, it'll happen more often in mangas regardless, but it isn't the case in this one. They just don't feel the need to tell each other anything like that with words.

Also, there's no direct equivalent to 'I love you' in Japanese. The cultural weight of words such as 'suki' and aishiteru' are quite different, without getting too deep in their meaning. But again, the use of 'suki' (which is mostly translated as 'I love you' to culturally make it easier to foreigners), which if I explain it very simply, actually mostly means 'like', and so it's actually more of an indirect way of telling the other their feelings. Aishiteru is barely used, mostly reserved to dramas (a bit too much feelings involved for Japanese to be at ease saying it, it has a higher connotation than your 'I love you'.

Juste like in (most) French cultures, kissing someone implies you're exclusive (another form of saying 'I love you' by the way), which isn't the case in cultures such as the American one, in which people can date multiple people in early stages without as much social stigma. Also 'aimer' in French also expresses both 'love' and 'like', so I feel it doesn't have the same weight here either. Everyone is just so used to say it multiple times a day even for mundane things.

Anyway, this ended up being long lol.

That was really helpful--thanks. There is something I have wondered, that as an American, I don't get. I notice in many manga, lovers or even spouses sometimes refer to their partner by either last name or use "____-san". Would there be that kind of formality when they are clearly a pair? Thank you for helping me understand Japanese culture.

I'm by no means an expert, but yeah, the main ways to do it would be to either use the given name, given name + chan or kun, nickname, or given name + san (which is a tad less used than the other three nowadays).

Their speech seems to have become more westernized, as calling someone only by their given name used to not be around. But that's a new generation thing, so the older the manga is, the more you're going to see the -san and whatnot around. Anyway, yeah, it's mostly a formality and form of respect. Even though chan and kun are not necessarily 'polite', it's considered more polite than only the given name. Of course -san is clearly polite.

There could be a lot of reasons using -san over say -kun or over nothing, mostly whether nor they're at ease at calling them in a informal way or not. I'd say shy people would tend to use -san more than others lol.

It's kind of like shifting from calling someone by their name to a nickname. It's all about ease (or personal preference). Just bear in mind that there's additional layers of that in the Japanese language. And there's no social expectation that couples shouldn't use honorifics.

Thanks for your insight. We are so informal here, it is hard to grasp the concept of so many layers of social custom. The more I read, though, the more curious I am about Japan. I would like to visit someday.