Dina Saruyama

Dina Saruyama is one of the main characters from the Dumbing of Age web-comic strip.

Dina is an undergrad student at IU, and lives in the Clark Wing of Read Hall with Amber O'Malley. Well-meaning but socially challenged to the extreme, she's never seen in public without her trusty green dinosaur hat.

Appearance
Dina is a small young woman with a shoulder-length black hair and has dark eyes. She is often seen wearing her green dinosaur hat.

Personality
Dina struggles to understand other people, and is well aware that she has problems in doing so. During Billie's ill-fated mall expedition in Saturday's All Right For Slighting, she admits to Sarah Clinton that she prefers dinosaurs to humans because dinosaurs are a fixed thing, one that doesn't change when she's trying to understand it.

Over the course of their time together, Amber has been slowly trying to rehabilitate Dina by teaching her the ins and outs of dealing with social situations, including important lessons like "look at the eyes, not the mouth", "light physical contact is an acceptable response to another person's distress", and "when somebody is gone all night long, it's probably a good idea to show concern."

Though she has trouble reading social cues, Dina is otherwise quite observant; she was the only other person who picked up on Amber's crush on Danny Wilcox, and she deduced that Amber was actually Amazi-Girl.

She recently entered into a social experiment regarding the possibility of same-sex attraction. Her partner in this endeavor is one Becky MacIntyre. It began, in part, due to her own displeasure with not being seen as an adult by her peers, coupled with the rapport she had established with Becky, who is rather enamored with her. Fortunately for both parties, it turns out the feelings are mutual.

Trivia

 * Taught herself piano for the sole purpose of being able to play the Jurassic Park theme.
 * Her parents had her take violin lessons.
 * Dina's dinosaur-related shirts thus far: "Dig It", " Terrible  Awesome Lizard", "Ask Me Why Dinosaurs Had Feathers", "Clever Girl", "RARR!", "Dinosaur" with a picture of a cassowary, a feathered Barney, a  Dinosaur Comics T-shirt, and "Bird Is The Word" with a picture of a raptor.
 * Eats cereal at every opportunity, because cereal is best.
 * Has a tendency to suddenly appear unexpectedly behind open doors, at beaches, or in pizza places.