A few weeks ago, one of my students told me that she had a fight with her husband and went off on an extended bike ride to cool off. I asked her what the argument was about and she described a situation to which I could very much relate. She said she wanted to talk about something she was interested in with her husband after he came home from work, but he was tired and not in the mood. She persisted and he got angry, then she got angry.
Like me, this particular student works freelance from home, though unlike me, she actually makes a full-time living from it. Her husband, like mine, works outside the home and puts in some pretty long hours. One of the things you find occurring when you're home all day and your partner is out working in a box somewhere is that he comes home overstimulated and tired, wanting nothing more than to zone out and be left alone while you want to talk about whatever has been floating around in your head all day. There's a big difference in your energy levels and how much stimulation your nervous system has had or needs.
When I first quit my full-time job (about 3 years ago now) and had no or few private students each day, this was a bigger issue because I was sitting at home most of the day and only talked to my sister or my friends very early in the day (due to time zone differences) and spent the rest of the day in relative isolation. When the CH got home, I was ready to pounce on him with a conversation and he was in desperate need of a decompression session. He spends all day talking to people so this is no small surprise, and spends the half hour before he gets to our door on a crowded train or station being bombarded with noise and buffeted around by other people who don't look where they're going and expect you to move to accommodate them.
In short order, we worked out a system whereby he came home and I left him in peace for about 15-30 minutes until he was ready to talk. Generally, I just wait until he starts talking to me of his own initiative. I imagine that this arrangement would not have been worked out so quickly if we hadn't been married for so long or didn't have experience identifying and working out solutions to such things. It also helps that we're both confident about our feelings for each other and don't take the need for a certain arrangement which excludes the other personally. Of course, the exclusion isn't a physical one. I don't have to leave the room or anything. I just have to leave him to recover from the stress of the day and the commute for a short time before engaging him in conversation.
I wonder at times if this may be a bigger problem for couples in Japan than those back home because having a larger house makes it easier to find a place to "escape" to areas where conversation can be avoided without necessarily making it clear why you're doing so. In fact, I wonder if people may develop patterns to adjust to their need for isolation without even being aware of why they're doing it in a larger home. In our apartment, the only rooms sufficiently isolated from one another that one can't hear a conversation or be spoken to are the bedroom and the bathroom.
Since I now have more students and freelance work compared to when I first quit, this is far less of an issue than before. I spend several hours talking to people so I don't really need to pounce when the CH gets home. However, one thing I take away from this experience (and my student's situation simply reminded me of this) is that there's usually an easy fix for the problems that arise from people living together if both parties communicate and surrender their neuroses and willfulness and just address the issue at hand.
Showing posts with label CH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CH. Show all posts
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Love Letters
Most people are probably familiar with the movies or stories where a daughter or other relative goes up into the attack or goes through an old dresser and finds a stack of love letters. The stack is usually about 3-5 inches thick and tied with a pretty ribbon. I'm wondering if that image is approaching the status of anachronism. Phones started to kill the idea of love letters, and all the opportunities for instantaneous communication that the Internet provides are in the process of delivering the finishing blow.
Even though I fell in love in the age of the telephone, certain circumstances made it such that it was not really a possibility for my husband (the CH) and I to use one. He was in Japan for a year of our "courtship". During his year alone, he didn't even have a phone because having one required a huge deposit at that time. Even if he had had one, it cost $1 per minute at that time and we couldn't have afforded it. During that year, we exchanged copious numbers of cassette tapes which we talked to each other on. We still have some of those cassettes, but very few relative to how many were exchanged. We had to record over them because we couldn't possibly save them all without going broke. We easily traded eight 90-minute tapes per week (apiece) with each other.
This is the approximately 10-inch stack of written correspondence we have saved from over the years.
You'd think that would have been enough correspondence, but it wasn't. What is more, the correspondence didn't stop after we were living together then married. When I was going through the letters, I found that there was a large number of Valentine's Day, birthday, and holiday cards. We also used to write each other letters from work early in our days in Japan when we had down time. That means we were writing to each other even when we saw each other every morning before work and every evening afterward. There are also some letters which each of us wrote late at night when we couldn't sleep and our partner was slumbering mere feet away in the next room.
31 cards in 18 days
There is a wide variety of correspondence in the stack pictured above, but there was a sequence that I wrote which I completely forgot about. The CH and I were married on April 1, 1989 and had a short honeymoon. Shortly after that, he flew to Japan to look for a job in Tokyo with the plan that I'd follow after he'd secured a job and an apartment. While he was in Tokyo from April 11 to April 29, I sent him 31 postcards from California. There were obvious days when I sent more than one card. For some reason, on April 14, I sent 4 cards. Note that we had lived together for a year before marrying, but being apart even for almost 3 weeks was nearly unbearable.
These days, we don't do this anymore. That is, we don't write each other late night letters, letters from work or give each other holiday cards. Somewhere along the line, we stopped writing it and just said things to each other. It wasn't that our passion was any less (far from it), but the ease with which we expressed it increased and we didn't feel compelled to write it as often. Still, looking through that stack of correspondence makes me consider the value of having such a romantic and nostalgic record of our relationship.
Even though I fell in love in the age of the telephone, certain circumstances made it such that it was not really a possibility for my husband (the CH) and I to use one. He was in Japan for a year of our "courtship". During his year alone, he didn't even have a phone because having one required a huge deposit at that time. Even if he had had one, it cost $1 per minute at that time and we couldn't have afforded it. During that year, we exchanged copious numbers of cassette tapes which we talked to each other on. We still have some of those cassettes, but very few relative to how many were exchanged. We had to record over them because we couldn't possibly save them all without going broke. We easily traded eight 90-minute tapes per week (apiece) with each other.
This is the approximately 10-inch stack of written correspondence we have saved from over the years. You'd think that would have been enough correspondence, but it wasn't. What is more, the correspondence didn't stop after we were living together then married. When I was going through the letters, I found that there was a large number of Valentine's Day, birthday, and holiday cards. We also used to write each other letters from work early in our days in Japan when we had down time. That means we were writing to each other even when we saw each other every morning before work and every evening afterward. There are also some letters which each of us wrote late at night when we couldn't sleep and our partner was slumbering mere feet away in the next room.
31 cards in 18 daysThere is a wide variety of correspondence in the stack pictured above, but there was a sequence that I wrote which I completely forgot about. The CH and I were married on April 1, 1989 and had a short honeymoon. Shortly after that, he flew to Japan to look for a job in Tokyo with the plan that I'd follow after he'd secured a job and an apartment. While he was in Tokyo from April 11 to April 29, I sent him 31 postcards from California. There were obvious days when I sent more than one card. For some reason, on April 14, I sent 4 cards. Note that we had lived together for a year before marrying, but being apart even for almost 3 weeks was nearly unbearable.
These days, we don't do this anymore. That is, we don't write each other late night letters, letters from work or give each other holiday cards. Somewhere along the line, we stopped writing it and just said things to each other. It wasn't that our passion was any less (far from it), but the ease with which we expressed it increased and we didn't feel compelled to write it as often. Still, looking through that stack of correspondence makes me consider the value of having such a romantic and nostalgic record of our relationship.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Divorce Calculator
Via Digg (I know, I shouldn't be looking at Digg), I came across a link to a divorce calculator. The calculator uses census data to determine the likelihood that people who share the same background, characteristics and history as you will divorce. I guess the idea is to shake people out of the lala-land mindset they tend to have when they marry. After all, no one ever marries thinking that divorce is likely... at least they don't if they're sane.
While I'm sure people will say everyone feels they are an exception, I'm certain I will never divorce. The CH and I are just too compatible and into each other to ever part. Hell, I hate it when he has to leave the house for work and we're apart for hours. I'm not even very happy with the fact that he has to leave the room to go to the bathroom sometimes. ;-) I'm probably the only person in Japan who feels one of the "up" sides to living in a tiny apartment is that I can see and talk to my husband almost all the time when he's home because neither of us has any privacy.
At any rate, the interesting thing about these calculators isn't so much that they tell you the chance that you will divorce, but rather how changing a few variables effects the outcome. The stats that are used are:
I did truthful stats for my husband and it said his chances are 22%. I'm guessing this is mainly because he's 2 years older than I and the older one marries, the less likely it seems one might divorce. When I increased the age (for a male with his stats) to marriage after 33, the chances of divorce dropped to 12%.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't met the CH. I'm guessing there's a decent chance I might have ended up divorced since that seems to be what has happened to about 1/3 of women in my shoes. There are two things of which I'm absolutely certain that can be said about my life if I hadn't met my husband. One is that I never would have ended up living in Japan. The other is that I never would have known such happiness with someone else. Of course, fact 1 has had no effect on fact 2, but both are the direct result of having met the CH.
While I'm sure people will say everyone feels they are an exception, I'm certain I will never divorce. The CH and I are just too compatible and into each other to ever part. Hell, I hate it when he has to leave the house for work and we're apart for hours. I'm not even very happy with the fact that he has to leave the room to go to the bathroom sometimes. ;-) I'm probably the only person in Japan who feels one of the "up" sides to living in a tiny apartment is that I can see and talk to my husband almost all the time when he's home because neither of us has any privacy.
At any rate, the interesting thing about these calculators isn't so much that they tell you the chance that you will divorce, but rather how changing a few variables effects the outcome. The stats that are used are:
- gender (Female)
- whether or not you have children (if you are female) (No)
- the year you married (1989)
- your education (university graduate)
- your age when you married (24)
- how long you've been married (19 years)
I did truthful stats for my husband and it said his chances are 22%. I'm guessing this is mainly because he's 2 years older than I and the older one marries, the less likely it seems one might divorce. When I increased the age (for a male with his stats) to marriage after 33, the chances of divorce dropped to 12%.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't met the CH. I'm guessing there's a decent chance I might have ended up divorced since that seems to be what has happened to about 1/3 of women in my shoes. There are two things of which I'm absolutely certain that can be said about my life if I hadn't met my husband. One is that I never would have ended up living in Japan. The other is that I never would have known such happiness with someone else. Of course, fact 1 has had no effect on fact 2, but both are the direct result of having met the CH.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
It's Okay to Bitch, But Not to Praise
Nearly two decades ago when I was working at Nova, I worked with a lot of teachers from a variety of countries. Near the end of my first year, a couple in their 30's from Canada started working there. Both of them held Master's degrees and were pretty smart people so I was surprised that they'd settle for work at the likes of Nova. This was before the teaching bubble burst and jobs became scarce and lower paying, though it was during the start of the slow ride downward for teachers in Japan.
At that point in time, I had only been with the CH for about two years in person and was extremely hungry to spend as much free time with him as possible... which is actually not appreciably different from now, but that's rather beside the point. At any rate, when we sat around the teacher's lounge area and talked about what we wanted to do, I would remark on occasion about how I preferred to spend as much time as possible with my cute little husband. While I did not remark on this to the female half of the married Canadian couple (who I believe was named Angela) probably overheard me talking to other people about the CH on occasion.
At one point, somehow my attitude toward the CH came up when she was taking part in a group chat and I showed my usual restraint in enthusiasm toward him, which is to say little to none. Well, that's an exaggeration. I do try to keep my remarks within socially acceptable boundaries in person, though I am pretty straightforward and don't go out of my way to hide the fact that my marriage is a very happy one if there is a topic at hand which may include something related to my relationship with my CH. At any rate, I said something, and Angela snapped back nastily saying something about how we all didn't have to spend as much time as possible with our husbands.
Considering the fact that I rarely or never spoke with her because she disliked Americans on principle, I felt her response was pretty out of line. It's not like I was "over sharing" with her. In fact, I'd never directly shared anything at all with her, but, even if I did, I'm not sure why my happiness ought to be so antagonistic toward her that she'd find it necessary to lash out at me.
Angela approved of British folks on principle and buddied up to them before teachers of all other nationalities. I think the pecking order was something like: U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Americans (but only if she held her nose near one). Since she wanted to be BFF ("best friends forever") with any Brit on the premises, she confided in my best friend at the time who happened to be from England. Angela told my friend that her husband was seeking an "open relationship" now that he'd spent some time in Japan and was finding that many delicate flowers were willing to open up to him. Their marriage was stressed because she didn't have a desire to stray and was angry about his attitude. In the end, she went back to Canada alone and I transferred to another branch of Nova in Kichijoji so I don't know if her husband went about pollinating all the blossoms on offer or if he kept it in his pants while his wife was an ocean away.
When I started working at my former office, I encountered another bitter woman who grew irrationally angry at me for my attitude toward my husband. This woman was American and married to a Japanese man. She hated living in Japan and felt trapped here because her husband couldn't work in the U.S. and make a decent living and she had no appreciable skills for getting work back home. She almost never spoke about her husband and was vague when anyone made polite smalltalk which involved asking her about him (e.g., what his job was). She also took a dislike to me because I was pretty gung-ho to expand my skills on the job in my down time and she preferred to read magazines and write letters in hers and she felt I was attempting to show her up. I must say that it was a pretty good indication of her self-preoccupation if she thought I spent hours cultivating skills just to make her look bad rather than doing something of use and interest to me. Between her growing resentment in my interest in gaining skills on the job and dislike of my mentioning anything about my personal life, the hostility reached a point where she simply stopped speaking to me altogether.
After those two memorable experiences with women who were openly snotty with me for being so openly happy with my husband, I realized a few things. First and foremost, unhappy people hate to be around someone who isn't experiencing the same type of unhappiness as they are. Misery loves company, but moreso if that company is miserable about the same things as it. The second thing I realized is that people are open-minded and sympathetic about any complaints people have about their spouses (at least up to a point). They can bitch about how lazy, selfish, stubborn, childish, etc. a spouse is and people will not think less of them unless they do it too often or too irrationally. However, they are far less tolerant or accepting of praise of one's spouse.
Sometimes we hear that many developed cultures are cultures of whiners and complainers. I think that the lack of social acceptance and, indeed, frequent social censure of people who are talking about their happiness is part of cultivating cultures full of people who focus excessively on the negative in their lives. It's cool to sneer, be snide, or deride people and everyone is more than happy to jump on the bandwagon for a bitch session (especially about spouses), but it's trite, childish, and possibly seen as bragging to focus on the positive. We get the cultures full of the types of people we earn through our actions.
At that point in time, I had only been with the CH for about two years in person and was extremely hungry to spend as much free time with him as possible... which is actually not appreciably different from now, but that's rather beside the point. At any rate, when we sat around the teacher's lounge area and talked about what we wanted to do, I would remark on occasion about how I preferred to spend as much time as possible with my cute little husband. While I did not remark on this to the female half of the married Canadian couple (who I believe was named Angela) probably overheard me talking to other people about the CH on occasion.
At one point, somehow my attitude toward the CH came up when she was taking part in a group chat and I showed my usual restraint in enthusiasm toward him, which is to say little to none. Well, that's an exaggeration. I do try to keep my remarks within socially acceptable boundaries in person, though I am pretty straightforward and don't go out of my way to hide the fact that my marriage is a very happy one if there is a topic at hand which may include something related to my relationship with my CH. At any rate, I said something, and Angela snapped back nastily saying something about how we all didn't have to spend as much time as possible with our husbands.
Considering the fact that I rarely or never spoke with her because she disliked Americans on principle, I felt her response was pretty out of line. It's not like I was "over sharing" with her. In fact, I'd never directly shared anything at all with her, but, even if I did, I'm not sure why my happiness ought to be so antagonistic toward her that she'd find it necessary to lash out at me.
Angela approved of British folks on principle and buddied up to them before teachers of all other nationalities. I think the pecking order was something like: U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Americans (but only if she held her nose near one). Since she wanted to be BFF ("best friends forever") with any Brit on the premises, she confided in my best friend at the time who happened to be from England. Angela told my friend that her husband was seeking an "open relationship" now that he'd spent some time in Japan and was finding that many delicate flowers were willing to open up to him. Their marriage was stressed because she didn't have a desire to stray and was angry about his attitude. In the end, she went back to Canada alone and I transferred to another branch of Nova in Kichijoji so I don't know if her husband went about pollinating all the blossoms on offer or if he kept it in his pants while his wife was an ocean away.
When I started working at my former office, I encountered another bitter woman who grew irrationally angry at me for my attitude toward my husband. This woman was American and married to a Japanese man. She hated living in Japan and felt trapped here because her husband couldn't work in the U.S. and make a decent living and she had no appreciable skills for getting work back home. She almost never spoke about her husband and was vague when anyone made polite smalltalk which involved asking her about him (e.g., what his job was). She also took a dislike to me because I was pretty gung-ho to expand my skills on the job in my down time and she preferred to read magazines and write letters in hers and she felt I was attempting to show her up. I must say that it was a pretty good indication of her self-preoccupation if she thought I spent hours cultivating skills just to make her look bad rather than doing something of use and interest to me. Between her growing resentment in my interest in gaining skills on the job and dislike of my mentioning anything about my personal life, the hostility reached a point where she simply stopped speaking to me altogether.
After those two memorable experiences with women who were openly snotty with me for being so openly happy with my husband, I realized a few things. First and foremost, unhappy people hate to be around someone who isn't experiencing the same type of unhappiness as they are. Misery loves company, but moreso if that company is miserable about the same things as it. The second thing I realized is that people are open-minded and sympathetic about any complaints people have about their spouses (at least up to a point). They can bitch about how lazy, selfish, stubborn, childish, etc. a spouse is and people will not think less of them unless they do it too often or too irrationally. However, they are far less tolerant or accepting of praise of one's spouse.
Sometimes we hear that many developed cultures are cultures of whiners and complainers. I think that the lack of social acceptance and, indeed, frequent social censure of people who are talking about their happiness is part of cultivating cultures full of people who focus excessively on the negative in their lives. It's cool to sneer, be snide, or deride people and everyone is more than happy to jump on the bandwagon for a bitch session (especially about spouses), but it's trite, childish, and possibly seen as bragging to focus on the positive. We get the cultures full of the types of people we earn through our actions.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Caramel Cake
Last year, I made the CH an Elvis cake for his birthday. It was good, but a little weird, so I asked him what special cake he wanted this year. He told me he wanted a caramel cake. I believe I only made one twice in the last 6-8 years, and the original recipe came from a Penzey's spices catalog which has long since been tossed. I searched Penzey's site, but they didn't have this recipe listed so I had to try and recover the recipe (or one like it) somehow.
I have very few cookbooks these days because the whole world of cooking is open to me with a search on the web. Most of the time, that works out pretty well, but not when it comes to certain recipes. Finding a caramel cake recipe, for instance, is very hard because there are many variations and few simple recipes. Those that are simple go too far and have ingredients like "cake mix" and instructions like "make cake as instructed by mix." Also, I didn't want chocolate caramel, cinnamon caramel, apple caramel, banana caramel, or tres leches. I wanted something straightforward with two flavors - cake and caramel.
I don't make cakes from mixes, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't find a good one in Japan without sifting through import shops. Finding a good, plain yellow cake recipe for a cake from scratch is very hard. It's as if everyone figures a plain cake is best produced from a mix or homemade ones are indistinguishable from those made from Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines. I can tell you for a fact that this is not true. Fortunately, some years ago and after some trial and error-based failures with cakes that disappointed (too sweet, too sticky, too flat), I found a good plain cake recipe and had the foresight to print it out and put it in my personal recipe file so I still had the basic cake recipe on hand.
Unfortunately, the caramel part of my old caramel cake recipe was long gone, but I turned up a recipe that seemed to fit the bill. The yellow cake in this recipe is like a pound cake, though not quite so heavy. It's moist, light, and sweet and the best homemade yellow cake I've run across. The caramel is easy to make and requires no exotic ingredients. The cake looks a little funky because you have to poke holes in it to allow the caramel to creep into the cake, but it's very good. I don't even like caramel, but I enjoyed this.
Yellow cake:
- 2 C. all-purpose flour
- 1 1/3 C. sugar
- 1/2 C. shortening (I used "cake margarine/keiki magarin", but you can use Crisco)
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 C. milk
- 2 eggs
- 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F./175 degrees C. Grease and flour a 9 x 9 baking dish (I used glass) and pour in the batter. Tap the edges to even it out. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Note that your cooking time may vary depending on the type of pan you use. Metal pans will require a shorter cooking time than glass.
Allow the cake to rest in the pan for 15 minutes. Gently loosen the edges and turn it out on a rack for cooling. Allow it to cool for at least 30 minutes before the next stage.
Caramel sauce:
- 1 1/2 C. brown sugar
- 4 tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 1 C. boiling water
- dash salt
- 2 tbsp. butter
- 2 tbsp. cream
- 1/2 tsp. vanilla
Remove the cooked sauce from the heat and stir in the butter. Once the butter has been completely melted into the sauce, stir in the vanilla and finally the cream. You want the sauce to have cooled a little before adding in the cream, but it shouldn't be cold.
Assembly:
Take the cooled cake and poke holes into it with a straw or chopsticks. I usually poke the holes closer together at the edges, but you can choose any pattern or number of holes you like.
Carefully pour the sauce over the cake filling in the holes as you go. You'll notice dimples forming as the sauce penetrates the cake. Once you have covered the whole cake once, go back over it and pour more sauce into the dimpled areas. There is plenty of sauce so you shouldn't have any problems totally filling in the holes even if you make quite a few (which I did). Any remaining sauce can be poured onto the center. If you run low on sauce, you can always spoon up the spillover and fill in any dimples.
This cake keeps very well for 2-3 days because it's moist and the sauce keeps it moister than usual. In fact, it is actually better the second day as more of the sauce penetrates into the cake as time goes by.
I think we were fortunate this time around to have both U.S. butter and New Zealand dark brown sugar to use for this. I've made it before with Japanese ingredients and it's good, but Japanese brown sugar isn't as deeply flavored. Also, and I hadn't noticed this until very recently as I haven't had American butter in about 2 decades, American butter is sweeter than Japanese butter. It's not that sugar is added, but rather that they use a different type of cream in U.S. butter. The U.S. butter, incidentally, was imported and sold for a hugely inflated price (about $17 for 2 cups) because of the butter shortage in Japan.
My husband and I didn't buy it. He was given it by a student who picked it up for 100 yen (about a dollar) because it was set to expire too soon. The butter we were given was equivalent to 2 cups of butter and doesn't expire until the end of this month. I'll be sad to finish it off. It's so good.
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Most Important Day
I've tried to approach this post from various angles and have written and deleted several paragraphs, but the truth is that some things are nearly impossible to explain in a way that others can relate to. Forty-six years ago today, the person who has transformed my life in more positive ways than I could have conceived of was born. This day is more precious to me than any other because he is more precious to me than anything.
Lots of people say that unconditional love does not exist, but I know it does because I've experienced it and it's nothing short of a miracle. Living with that miracle everyday through my husband is the greatest gift life can give a person. I can't begin to celebrate this day in a way which suits its importance to my life, but I'm going to try.
Lots of people say that unconditional love does not exist, but I know it does because I've experienced it and it's nothing short of a miracle. Living with that miracle everyday through my husband is the greatest gift life can give a person. I can't begin to celebrate this day in a way which suits its importance to my life, but I'm going to try.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Merrily, Merrily, Merrily
There are three types of marital status situations in Japan for foreign females. Single, married to a Japanese person, and married to a foreign person. The first two make up the vast majority of foreign women in Japan, at least outside of the posh gaijin ghettos. Those lucky women, who tend to live a life similar to that in the U.S. with cars, foreign grocery shops and expense accounts, generally aren't here for a long time because they move back home when their husband's work here is done.
I am most definitely in the minority when it comes to being foreign, female, married to another foreigner, and having lived here for a long time. This sort of makes me wonder if no foreign woman in her right mind would live here for so long if she didn't have to, but that sort of indicates that I'm very much not in my right mind (which may already be obvious to some of you).
Japan can be a very hard place for foreign women because the culture is still male-centric. Even if your husband is a perfect specimen of equality, the world around you and very likely your Japanese in-laws will not be (if you've got a Japanese hubby). I have often said that I could never have married a Japanese man because there are so many issues. One of them is the mother-in-law issue can be much worse here than the bad in-law situations back home. The main reason for that is exemplified in something one of my (still single and in her 40's) student told me. We were talking about relationships and she said she never wanted to marry. When I asked her why, she said that her mother was "bullied" by her paternal grandmother and aunt and she saw the stress and difficulty that put on her mother. I asked her what they criticized her mother about and she said 'anything and everything.' She went on to say that she believed it was the "custom" in Japan for female in-laws to rag on the wife of their darling son or brother.
While I'm certain that this situation is not the case for everyone, I'm also sure that there are status issues at play and a different role for in-laws in Japanese culture. In my absolutely anecdotal and statistically invalid experience, about 30% of married Japanese women have no or few in-law issues and the rest find it to be one of the most onerous aspects of marriage. These in-law problems don't tend to extend to foreign men who marry Japanese women though since the culture doesn't have a "custom" of criticizing and interfering with husbands like it does with wives.
Wives have the unfortunate burden of having to prove themselves on multiple levels (in all cultures, but more so in Japan in my opinion). They have to cook, clean, give birth to and raise kids, and, if necessary, work part-time to contribute to the family income. Men essentially have to be healthy and work. Mainly, they have to work full-time and make enough money to support the family. Being a successful Japanese housewife and mother can be a pretty high bar to get your chin up to in the eyes of a mother-in-law and Japanese society. I'm guessing this is why marriage rates are dropping in Japan and women are marrying later. Now that many women can work and have careers in Japan, they're not so keen to toss it all aside for the burdens of marriage.
Several weeks ago, I was recommended a blog written by a foreign wife of a Japanese man through Google Reader. If you don't use this function, I recommend you do as it'll point you to blogs similar to ones to which you're already subscribed. If you subscribe to your own blog, you can get ones similar to your type of writing as well. It's an excellent way to find new content of the type which you already enjoy.
Getting back to the point though, this woman is living my worst image of what life would be like with a Japanese husband. Please don't get me wrong. I don't think that there aren't women who have problems with foreign husbands, but just that your options are different in a relationship with a Japanese person because of cultural issues and different expectations. If you're married to a foreign fellow and he's a jerk, you have a support network that believes he is also a jerk because they have the same values as you when it comes to marital roles. When you're married to a Japanese man, you get less support when he is slack about doing his part with housework or kids because you are perceived as a failure as a wife. He is not likely to be perceived as a failure as a husband if he works full-time and is seen as making a decent living.
This morning, I read a piece by this woman and she was attempting to put together one of those elaborate bento chock full of fully-cooked little tidbits elegantly arranged in a bento box which Japanese wives are supposed to do without difficulty or complaint. All she asked was that her husband lend a hand with their kids in the morning while she tried to whip up his requested lunch box (which he was taking along on community event, he wasn't working). He shirked the responsibility he agreed to by running off to the toilet five times and generally finding ways not to take care of the kids for a short time.
Now, this stood in exceptionally sharp contrast to my morning where I slept in 20 minutes later than my CH and woke up with a backache. This isn't unusual for me these days as I tend to have back pain every morning but it wears off in about 15-30 minutes and I usually wake up before the CH so it passes and I take care of business before he heads off to work. Keep in mind that the CH works full-time from Wednesday to Sunday so he's got a full day of work and a commute ahead of him whereas I've got just 4 hours of private lessons in the apartment. Because I have a backache, he prepares his own coffee, gets his own lunch together, and serves me my coffee in the 15 minutes he's got before he has to rush out the door.
I can't help but compare the other woman's harried morning to my morning occurring in the same time frame. Hers ends with a big fight and a cathartic blog post. Mine ends with me eating a chestnut pastry that the CH picked up especially for me last night on his way home from work along with the coffee he served me (including microwaving milk for the coffee to just the right temperature). I can't help but think that I'm living a life which is a dream and she's living my nightmare.
I am most definitely in the minority when it comes to being foreign, female, married to another foreigner, and having lived here for a long time. This sort of makes me wonder if no foreign woman in her right mind would live here for so long if she didn't have to, but that sort of indicates that I'm very much not in my right mind (which may already be obvious to some of you).
Japan can be a very hard place for foreign women because the culture is still male-centric. Even if your husband is a perfect specimen of equality, the world around you and very likely your Japanese in-laws will not be (if you've got a Japanese hubby). I have often said that I could never have married a Japanese man because there are so many issues. One of them is the mother-in-law issue can be much worse here than the bad in-law situations back home. The main reason for that is exemplified in something one of my (still single and in her 40's) student told me. We were talking about relationships and she said she never wanted to marry. When I asked her why, she said that her mother was "bullied" by her paternal grandmother and aunt and she saw the stress and difficulty that put on her mother. I asked her what they criticized her mother about and she said 'anything and everything.' She went on to say that she believed it was the "custom" in Japan for female in-laws to rag on the wife of their darling son or brother.
While I'm certain that this situation is not the case for everyone, I'm also sure that there are status issues at play and a different role for in-laws in Japanese culture. In my absolutely anecdotal and statistically invalid experience, about 30% of married Japanese women have no or few in-law issues and the rest find it to be one of the most onerous aspects of marriage. These in-law problems don't tend to extend to foreign men who marry Japanese women though since the culture doesn't have a "custom" of criticizing and interfering with husbands like it does with wives.
Wives have the unfortunate burden of having to prove themselves on multiple levels (in all cultures, but more so in Japan in my opinion). They have to cook, clean, give birth to and raise kids, and, if necessary, work part-time to contribute to the family income. Men essentially have to be healthy and work. Mainly, they have to work full-time and make enough money to support the family. Being a successful Japanese housewife and mother can be a pretty high bar to get your chin up to in the eyes of a mother-in-law and Japanese society. I'm guessing this is why marriage rates are dropping in Japan and women are marrying later. Now that many women can work and have careers in Japan, they're not so keen to toss it all aside for the burdens of marriage.
Several weeks ago, I was recommended a blog written by a foreign wife of a Japanese man through Google Reader. If you don't use this function, I recommend you do as it'll point you to blogs similar to ones to which you're already subscribed. If you subscribe to your own blog, you can get ones similar to your type of writing as well. It's an excellent way to find new content of the type which you already enjoy.
Getting back to the point though, this woman is living my worst image of what life would be like with a Japanese husband. Please don't get me wrong. I don't think that there aren't women who have problems with foreign husbands, but just that your options are different in a relationship with a Japanese person because of cultural issues and different expectations. If you're married to a foreign fellow and he's a jerk, you have a support network that believes he is also a jerk because they have the same values as you when it comes to marital roles. When you're married to a Japanese man, you get less support when he is slack about doing his part with housework or kids because you are perceived as a failure as a wife. He is not likely to be perceived as a failure as a husband if he works full-time and is seen as making a decent living.
This morning, I read a piece by this woman and she was attempting to put together one of those elaborate bento chock full of fully-cooked little tidbits elegantly arranged in a bento box which Japanese wives are supposed to do without difficulty or complaint. All she asked was that her husband lend a hand with their kids in the morning while she tried to whip up his requested lunch box (which he was taking along on community event, he wasn't working). He shirked the responsibility he agreed to by running off to the toilet five times and generally finding ways not to take care of the kids for a short time.
Now, this stood in exceptionally sharp contrast to my morning where I slept in 20 minutes later than my CH and woke up with a backache. This isn't unusual for me these days as I tend to have back pain every morning but it wears off in about 15-30 minutes and I usually wake up before the CH so it passes and I take care of business before he heads off to work. Keep in mind that the CH works full-time from Wednesday to Sunday so he's got a full day of work and a commute ahead of him whereas I've got just 4 hours of private lessons in the apartment. Because I have a backache, he prepares his own coffee, gets his own lunch together, and serves me my coffee in the 15 minutes he's got before he has to rush out the door.
I can't help but compare the other woman's harried morning to my morning occurring in the same time frame. Hers ends with a big fight and a cathartic blog post. Mine ends with me eating a chestnut pastry that the CH picked up especially for me last night on his way home from work along with the coffee he served me (including microwaving milk for the coffee to just the right temperature). I can't help but think that I'm living a life which is a dream and she's living my nightmare.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Pancakes for Breakfast
My sweet and adorable CH works really hard. For 4 of the 5 days he works, he has to get up early, get some coffee in him and have a quick bite before heading off to work or for a pre-work swim. The only morning when he has anything resembling a real morning with time to wake up and eat at a reasonable pace is Friday. Since he's relegated to such a slapdash start to the day most of the time, I like to try and do something a bit better than ask him if he's like a slice of banana or pumpkin bread from the freezer on Friday mornings.
The ideal special breakfast is pancakes, but the summer is so hot that it's almost impossible to tolerate making them in the morning, especially since I always wake up feeling hot (all year round) anyway. Since the weather is mellowing out, I've been trying to get in more mornings with this nice breakfast treat. Unfortunately, I believe I have fibromyalgia and I wake up feeling like I was run over by a truck the night before so it's hard to motivate myself to get it all together.
The way I've worked around my morning limits is to set up as much of my own homemade "pancake mix" as possible the night before. Doing this and presetting the coffee machine makes it far easier to do a labor-intensive breakfast. While there are pre-made pancake mixes sold in smallish boxes in Japan, they are over-priced for their volume and not especially good. Homemade pancakes can be made for a pittance and are excellent. You can also make your own syrup to avoid the incredibly expensive syrup, though that only works if you're not a dedicated consumer of maple syrup.
The recipe I use is a modification of one from "The Joy of Baking". It's altered mainly to reflect a desire for fluffier, thicker pancakes as well as to streamline the preparation process. The original recipe is here and I'll type my modification in this post. These are the type of pancakes that are built for pleasure, not for nutrition. I have another variety that I make with oats which is a little better for you. The recipe for those is back on my old blog.
To make it easier in the morning, I mix all of the dry ingredients in a plastic bowl with a lid the night before. This avoids all the tedious measuring and half of the mixing. I also set up the oil, a whisk, measuring cup and spoon and a bowl for the wet ingredients to be mixed in. I've also been known to put the pan on the burner to remove that tiny step as well. When morning comes, I only have to reach for the eggs and milk to get the show on the road. It's worth noting that all of the dry ingredients could be made in bulk and set aside for just making pancakes any time. If you did this, you'd probably need about 1.25 cups of "mix" to make a batch of pancakes in the future.
Dry ingredients:
Wet ingredients:
Pre-heat your skillet over medium-high heat. When it's good and hot, either melt some butter or margarine in it or coat it lightly with Canola oil. It's important not to oil the pan up too much or your pancakes will deep fry around the edges. Drop a tablespoon and a half of batter per cake to make medium-size ones. Fry until the edges are dry and bubbles start to form on the top then flip and finish cooking. This recipe makes 8-10 medium pancakes.
The ideal special breakfast is pancakes, but the summer is so hot that it's almost impossible to tolerate making them in the morning, especially since I always wake up feeling hot (all year round) anyway. Since the weather is mellowing out, I've been trying to get in more mornings with this nice breakfast treat. Unfortunately, I believe I have fibromyalgia and I wake up feeling like I was run over by a truck the night before so it's hard to motivate myself to get it all together.
The way I've worked around my morning limits is to set up as much of my own homemade "pancake mix" as possible the night before. Doing this and presetting the coffee machine makes it far easier to do a labor-intensive breakfast. While there are pre-made pancake mixes sold in smallish boxes in Japan, they are over-priced for their volume and not especially good. Homemade pancakes can be made for a pittance and are excellent. You can also make your own syrup to avoid the incredibly expensive syrup, though that only works if you're not a dedicated consumer of maple syrup.
The recipe I use is a modification of one from "The Joy of Baking". It's altered mainly to reflect a desire for fluffier, thicker pancakes as well as to streamline the preparation process. The original recipe is here and I'll type my modification in this post. These are the type of pancakes that are built for pleasure, not for nutrition. I have another variety that I make with oats which is a little better for you. The recipe for those is back on my old blog.
To make it easier in the morning, I mix all of the dry ingredients in a plastic bowl with a lid the night before. This avoids all the tedious measuring and half of the mixing. I also set up the oil, a whisk, measuring cup and spoon and a bowl for the wet ingredients to be mixed in. I've also been known to put the pan on the burner to remove that tiny step as well. When morning comes, I only have to reach for the eggs and milk to get the show on the road. It's worth noting that all of the dry ingredients could be made in bulk and set aside for just making pancakes any time. If you did this, you'd probably need about 1.25 cups of "mix" to make a batch of pancakes in the future.
Dry ingredients:
- 1 cup flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 2 tbsp. white sugar
Wet ingredients:
- 1 medium or large egg
- 3/4 cup milk (use up to 1 cup if you like thinner pancakes)
- 2 tbsp. Canola oil
- dash of vanilla (optional - it depends on your syrup or topping)
Pre-heat your skillet over medium-high heat. When it's good and hot, either melt some butter or margarine in it or coat it lightly with Canola oil. It's important not to oil the pan up too much or your pancakes will deep fry around the edges. Drop a tablespoon and a half of batter per cake to make medium-size ones. Fry until the edges are dry and bubbles start to form on the top then flip and finish cooking. This recipe makes 8-10 medium pancakes.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Griefers
When we were kids, one of the tests of our concentration and dexterity was to simultaneously pat our heads and rub our stomachs in a circular motion. I'm not quite sure of what is involved in accomplishing this feat, but most people can do it (for awhile, at least) though there was always a kid who couldn't manage it in a group that gave it a try. Given that most kids couldn't keep it up for long, I imagine it's about focus.
Over the weekend, my CH demonstrated incredibly good concentration as he was relaxing and playing one of our favorite multi-player on-line games, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (LOD).
If you look at the picture, you can see that he's got each hand on separate mice controlling two characters on two different computers simultaneously. I have enough trouble controlling one mouse with my left hand, let alone keeping tabs on a mouse's action in a game. The only thing that makes this a little more manageable is that the characters he controls move close enough to one another that he can track them both on one screen.
My husband was controlling two characters at once because he wanted to "rush" them. Rushing means that the player wants the characters to advance and develop as quickly as possible. This is a fairly common thing to do when someone has played a game for a long time and no longer enjoys the lower level play as it isn't very challenging once one becomes proficient in the game.
In Diablo II: LOD, one of the fastest ways to rush is to join what are called "public" games because the experience comes faster if the game has more players (8 is the maximum). A public game is open to anyone who wants to join so you end up playing with strangers. Playing a multiplayer game with strangers can be a very enjoyable experience or immensely disheartening. Sometimes you get chatter which is witty and fun and sometimes you get ugly, racist nonsense or unnecessary criticism of other player's playing ability or character "wealth" (or lack thereof).
The biggest pitfall to playing a game with strangers is that many multiplayer games have the possibility of allowing "griefers" to ruin the game experience. A griefer is someone who goes out of his way to cause difficulty or destroy the game playing experience for others. One of the most common ways this is done is for a vastly higher level character to enter a game with new characters of very low level and declare hostility on them. The high level character is well-equipped and has between 10-20 times more life (hitpoints) as the characters he's trying to kill. There's no challenge in killing the other players for griefers. In fact, they aren't interested in challenge, they are only interested in causing others to suffer.
In Diablo II: LOD, there are several ways to grief. One is to go hostile on players and hunt them down and kill them or to go hostile and cause a bunch of formerly cooperative players who were enjoying a good game together to abandon the game. Another, more subtle and insidious way, is to find out what sort of quest a player is doing and then complete the last portion before they can fulfill the steps leading up to the final challenge. Doing this disables their ability to complete the quest. Last night, my husband experienced this when someone blocked the entrance to a chamber where players were to face a big boss that had to be killed. A team of griefers actually performed this. One of them went down stairs to kill the boss and the other stood in front of the entrance so other players could not get through.
I've often wondered why griefers do what they do. Why would anyone extract pleasure from spoiling the fun of others? When you don't operate from a similar mindset, it's hard to grasp their motivation. I've always concluded that it's just like any other form of bullying where a person preys on a weaker party to feel powerful and compensate for their feelings of low self-esteem and self-worth. A lot of griefers justify their behavior by claiming they're "training" people for the fact that they'll have to deal with jerks in real life. However, I believe this is a weak justification and is telling of the fact that the griefers themselves have suffered unfair attacks in other areas of their lives. They seek to rationalize their pain by viewing it as a helpful process rather than their projecting their anger onto innocent targets just as someone else has done to them. It helps them distort their reality so they don't have to feel like victims and gives them a feeling of power to couterbalance the helplessness they felt when they were victims.
When I've discussed this on occasion in gaming forums, I've been accused of making too much of anti-social behavior in situations which "don't matter." That is, behaving poorly in an arena which is virtual and has no real consequence aside from upsetting people who are trying to relax and have fun isn't the same as behaving badly in real social environments or "real life." I agree, but not in the way the argument is meant.
I believe that real morality and personal ethics are conveyed only in situations that are of little or no consequence. If you have something at stake (social rejection, promotion at work, possible arrest), your ethics are not under any real test as you are acting for reward or out of fear of censure and not from your moral center. I think that the way you behave when no on is looking and when you can't be held accountable is a reflection of your true ethics.
Over the weekend, my CH demonstrated incredibly good concentration as he was relaxing and playing one of our favorite multi-player on-line games, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (LOD).
If you look at the picture, you can see that he's got each hand on separate mice controlling two characters on two different computers simultaneously. I have enough trouble controlling one mouse with my left hand, let alone keeping tabs on a mouse's action in a game. The only thing that makes this a little more manageable is that the characters he controls move close enough to one another that he can track them both on one screen.
My husband was controlling two characters at once because he wanted to "rush" them. Rushing means that the player wants the characters to advance and develop as quickly as possible. This is a fairly common thing to do when someone has played a game for a long time and no longer enjoys the lower level play as it isn't very challenging once one becomes proficient in the game.
In Diablo II: LOD, one of the fastest ways to rush is to join what are called "public" games because the experience comes faster if the game has more players (8 is the maximum). A public game is open to anyone who wants to join so you end up playing with strangers. Playing a multiplayer game with strangers can be a very enjoyable experience or immensely disheartening. Sometimes you get chatter which is witty and fun and sometimes you get ugly, racist nonsense or unnecessary criticism of other player's playing ability or character "wealth" (or lack thereof).
The biggest pitfall to playing a game with strangers is that many multiplayer games have the possibility of allowing "griefers" to ruin the game experience. A griefer is someone who goes out of his way to cause difficulty or destroy the game playing experience for others. One of the most common ways this is done is for a vastly higher level character to enter a game with new characters of very low level and declare hostility on them. The high level character is well-equipped and has between 10-20 times more life (hitpoints) as the characters he's trying to kill. There's no challenge in killing the other players for griefers. In fact, they aren't interested in challenge, they are only interested in causing others to suffer.
In Diablo II: LOD, there are several ways to grief. One is to go hostile on players and hunt them down and kill them or to go hostile and cause a bunch of formerly cooperative players who were enjoying a good game together to abandon the game. Another, more subtle and insidious way, is to find out what sort of quest a player is doing and then complete the last portion before they can fulfill the steps leading up to the final challenge. Doing this disables their ability to complete the quest. Last night, my husband experienced this when someone blocked the entrance to a chamber where players were to face a big boss that had to be killed. A team of griefers actually performed this. One of them went down stairs to kill the boss and the other stood in front of the entrance so other players could not get through.
I've often wondered why griefers do what they do. Why would anyone extract pleasure from spoiling the fun of others? When you don't operate from a similar mindset, it's hard to grasp their motivation. I've always concluded that it's just like any other form of bullying where a person preys on a weaker party to feel powerful and compensate for their feelings of low self-esteem and self-worth. A lot of griefers justify their behavior by claiming they're "training" people for the fact that they'll have to deal with jerks in real life. However, I believe this is a weak justification and is telling of the fact that the griefers themselves have suffered unfair attacks in other areas of their lives. They seek to rationalize their pain by viewing it as a helpful process rather than their projecting their anger onto innocent targets just as someone else has done to them. It helps them distort their reality so they don't have to feel like victims and gives them a feeling of power to couterbalance the helplessness they felt when they were victims.
When I've discussed this on occasion in gaming forums, I've been accused of making too much of anti-social behavior in situations which "don't matter." That is, behaving poorly in an arena which is virtual and has no real consequence aside from upsetting people who are trying to relax and have fun isn't the same as behaving badly in real social environments or "real life." I agree, but not in the way the argument is meant.
I believe that real morality and personal ethics are conveyed only in situations that are of little or no consequence. If you have something at stake (social rejection, promotion at work, possible arrest), your ethics are not under any real test as you are acting for reward or out of fear of censure and not from your moral center. I think that the way you behave when no on is looking and when you can't be held accountable is a reflection of your true ethics.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Demonstrations
It's been raining all day in Tokyo. It's been around 90 degrees Fahrenheit/32 degrees Celsius for most of the day. There has been thunder and lightning on and off (much to my delight) and it's super muggy (much less so to my delight).
I went out into the super hot kitchen and baked pumpkin bread for my CH. He went to the local store and surprised me by sweating and dragging back an entire case of Coke Zero so I wouldn't have to make as many trips to the stores in the blazing heat in the coming weeks. The little difficulties we voluntarily endure to make each other happy are just one of the things which demonstrate our love for one another.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
"Enough"?
In the early days of our time in Japan, my CH joined a local health club so he could swim. It wasn't terribly expensive, but it was an inconvenient membership. He had to get up early and finish by noon at the latest. In fact, he often got up to swim while I was asleep and I was still asleep when he returned. After a few years of this, he started losing the drive to get up in the wee hours and rush out for a swim, particularly in the winter, and we bought a treadmill and he walked on it at home.
Fast forward until about 3 years ago and my CH started to have problems with his foot which kept him from walking on our completely manual treadmill. Since it has no machine driving the belt, you have to pull extra hard with your feet to move it so having a lame foot makes using it impossible without significant discomfort.
When a flyer magically appeared in our mailbox offering a reasonable deal on a day-time membership (9:00-5:00) at my CH's former health club for only about $80 a month, I strongly urged him to return to swimming. Though he wanted to swim again, he was somewhat hesitant to pay the monthly fees because I'd just quit my job and our income had dropped by about half. I assured him that his health was a high enough priority for us to make cut-backs elsewhere to accomodate his health club membership.
Since he started back up again, he's been using the same swimming trunks he's had all these years. He's had two pair for almost a decade and a half and one of them gave up the ghost yesterday. As I was fishing out the remaining pair, I got to pondering about how much is "enough". Does he really need two pair of swimming trunks or should one be enough? I concluded that he needed two so they could be swapped out and washed without interfering with his exercising, and so he has a back-up pair if one is damaged or lost.
From a rational viewpoint, "enough" should be something which is objective. Each person should be able to assess her need and figure out what is "enough". In reality, it's highly subjective. One person's "enough" is another's "highly insufficient" or "too much." This is something which is frequently brought home to me when I read the Apartment Therapy web site and people talk about the size of their "tiny" or "small" apartments which are always at least 1/4 bigger than mine (and often twice or three times as big). When someone asked if a couple could live in a 400 sq. feet place, one person said that you could only manage it if you spent as little time as possible in the apartment and spent as much time as possible outside in cafés, restaurants or other public spaces. My CH and I live in a place which is about 365 sq. feet (so I've been told) and manage to feel comfortable in it. We feel no compulsion to get out as often as possible. I daresay we could probably actually manage an even smaller space with one less room though it'd be very difficult to teach private lessons with one less room than we have now and it would require losing a few computers and getting a smaller television.
I think most people could get by with less than they have and a vast deal less than they believe is the least they can deal with. One of the things that living in Japan has made me grateful for is that the situation has really fully prepared me for the idea of scaling down my lifestyle and being satisfied with what I have. I used to want a bigger place with separate rooms for various functions (an exercise room, an entertainment room, etc.). Now, all I can think about is that it'd just be more expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer as well as just encourage me to save more junk. I've also grown accustomed to not using a clothes dryer or dishwasher. All those eco-friendly lifestyle changes people are forcing themselves into back home are "am there, doing that" for me.
Sometimes I wonder if there is appreciably more I could give up if circumstances compelled me to do so. I'm sure that people who devote their lives to helping in areas without technology would think that I have "too much" even at the level I'm at now. I'm not quite prepared to give up my computer or Internet connectivity, though I sometimes think it might be a good idea to try...at least for a little while.
Fast forward until about 3 years ago and my CH started to have problems with his foot which kept him from walking on our completely manual treadmill. Since it has no machine driving the belt, you have to pull extra hard with your feet to move it so having a lame foot makes using it impossible without significant discomfort.
When a flyer magically appeared in our mailbox offering a reasonable deal on a day-time membership (9:00-5:00) at my CH's former health club for only about $80 a month, I strongly urged him to return to swimming. Though he wanted to swim again, he was somewhat hesitant to pay the monthly fees because I'd just quit my job and our income had dropped by about half. I assured him that his health was a high enough priority for us to make cut-backs elsewhere to accomodate his health club membership.
Since he started back up again, he's been using the same swimming trunks he's had all these years. He's had two pair for almost a decade and a half and one of them gave up the ghost yesterday. As I was fishing out the remaining pair, I got to pondering about how much is "enough". Does he really need two pair of swimming trunks or should one be enough? I concluded that he needed two so they could be swapped out and washed without interfering with his exercising, and so he has a back-up pair if one is damaged or lost.
From a rational viewpoint, "enough" should be something which is objective. Each person should be able to assess her need and figure out what is "enough". In reality, it's highly subjective. One person's "enough" is another's "highly insufficient" or "too much." This is something which is frequently brought home to me when I read the Apartment Therapy web site and people talk about the size of their "tiny" or "small" apartments which are always at least 1/4 bigger than mine (and often twice or three times as big). When someone asked if a couple could live in a 400 sq. feet place, one person said that you could only manage it if you spent as little time as possible in the apartment and spent as much time as possible outside in cafés, restaurants or other public spaces. My CH and I live in a place which is about 365 sq. feet (so I've been told) and manage to feel comfortable in it. We feel no compulsion to get out as often as possible. I daresay we could probably actually manage an even smaller space with one less room though it'd be very difficult to teach private lessons with one less room than we have now and it would require losing a few computers and getting a smaller television.
I think most people could get by with less than they have and a vast deal less than they believe is the least they can deal with. One of the things that living in Japan has made me grateful for is that the situation has really fully prepared me for the idea of scaling down my lifestyle and being satisfied with what I have. I used to want a bigger place with separate rooms for various functions (an exercise room, an entertainment room, etc.). Now, all I can think about is that it'd just be more expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer as well as just encourage me to save more junk. I've also grown accustomed to not using a clothes dryer or dishwasher. All those eco-friendly lifestyle changes people are forcing themselves into back home are "am there, doing that" for me.
Sometimes I wonder if there is appreciably more I could give up if circumstances compelled me to do so. I'm sure that people who devote their lives to helping in areas without technology would think that I have "too much" even at the level I'm at now. I'm not quite prepared to give up my computer or Internet connectivity, though I sometimes think it might be a good idea to try...at least for a little while.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Getting What You Deserve
Back before my CH was the angel that brought the sun which warmed my spirit and brightened my days, he was my pen friend. During the brief period of time when we weren't over the moon about each other, we each made a list of the attributes we both felt should be present in a perfect mate. The discussion of this list may have been fueled by a latent attraction or the fact that the CH long before he was my CH had gone through an emotionally difficult break-up with a girlfriend. The types of things he did and did not want were foremost in his mind when considering what went wrong, particularly since his ex is a nice person and they got on so well before it all went wrong.
When we compared our list, I recall that we each listed 10 items and that he fit 8 of my criteria easily and possibly all of them in some sense. The only one he felt somewhat strongly did not apply to him was "ambitious," though he probably saw "ambition" differently than I did. I wasn't hoping for someone who was going to become a doctor or join the peace corps. I was thinking mainly of someone who wanted to engage in some sort of "professional" work. In other words, I was hoping for someone who didn't aspire to no more than working in a local gas station or convenience store and spend most nights at locals bars getting sauced then cheating on their wives by sleeping with their sisters-in-law. That was the way that most of the local males in my area ended up. Though the list is lost forever, I do recall that certain things were not on it. Being attractive, tall, rich, having high status, and an impressive education were all absent from my list. Mainly, I wanted someone who was intelligent, emotionally stable, funny, kind, communicative, affectionate and attentive.
I often tell people that they get the spouse they deserve based on their priorities and I completely believe that is true. If you get someone who is a shallow gold-digger, then your priorities in choosing your mate landed you that type of person. It will likely come as no surprise to anyone that many people (from my own culture, I don't say this to Japanese people) disagree with my assertion in this regard. The most vigorous disagreement comes from those who have had bad break-ups and divorces. I'm sure such people feel as if they were wonderful and were tricked, taken advantage of, duped, or witnessed a dramatic change of character when everything went wrong in the relationship. Such people are likely misunderstanding what I mean when I say you get the spouse you "deserve" though this is likely due to my choice of words. I certainly do not mean a person with a bad spouse is a bad person who "deserves" the pain of a rotten relationship. It's more the case that the way in which they rule out certain parties and include other parties results in them getting the person they ended up with. If you're going to reject good people in favor of people who have shortcomings, then you deserve the one with shortcomings. More often than not, beauty is the reason those shortcomings are ignored initially.
Note that I have rarely met anyone who didn't put "attractive" on their list of priorities (near the top or at the top) except my husband and I. That is not to say my husband isn't as cute as all get-out and doesn't have the kindest face ever to exist (even my students will remark immediately after meeting him that he has "kindly eyes"), but rather that that was a "bonus" and not a requirement of my loving him. Inevitably, anyone who puts physical beauty on the list defends this choice by saying that it is natural for humans to want beauty and that you can't marry someone to whom you are not sexually attracted. This is true, but the fact of the matter is that beauty is one of the worst criteria for choosing a mate in modern culture where producing off-spring is not the most important result of the relationship and relationships revolve around higher order needs than putting bison on the table for dinner.
What most people either don't realize or simply fail to consider is that every positive "yin" you get in a person's character will come with a negative "yang". Ambition often brings single-mindedness, a lack of attention, and one's partner appearing lower on the totem pole than a job. My CH's laid-back nature (which I adore) brings a certain amount of laziness and a lack of ambition. Fortunately, these things don't trouble me. In fact, one of the ways in which I have become sanguine about aspects of my mate's character which initially troubled me was to realize that they were the flip-side of the coin. I couldn't have the things I treasured in him without some of the things which may not make my life the easiest. If I can't live with "tails" coming up once in awhile on the character coin, then I can't have "heads". You have to appreciate the good aspects of your partner enough to be patient with the not so good ones or you're simply being unfair.
One of the lessons I teach is about relationships. Part of the lesson is asking the student what they value in a partner. After hearing their lists, I try to impress upon my students that they can't have it all. I also try to dissuade them from making appearance the highest priority by letting them know that beauty lasts 20 years at best and then you live with only the personality. It's the structural integrity of the house that matters, not the attractiveness of the facade.
All of these thoughts about relationships were initiated when I saw pictures of Joseph at Tame Goes Wild with his fiancee. He's getting married very soon and seeing pictures of him and his bride-to-be planting a tree before leaving England for Japan further fueled my belief that they are going to be the type of couple who deserve each other in the best possible way. I met Joseph when he worked as a temporary worker at my former office and he was quite a different person then compared to now (as was I, I'm sure). He's aspiring to be a positive person who contributes to the world in the best possible way and I hope he and his *Twinkle* spend the rest of their lives working together to do all the good things they dream about doing. I'm sure the world will be a better place for their union.
Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. *Twinkle*, and many happy returns!
When we compared our list, I recall that we each listed 10 items and that he fit 8 of my criteria easily and possibly all of them in some sense. The only one he felt somewhat strongly did not apply to him was "ambitious," though he probably saw "ambition" differently than I did. I wasn't hoping for someone who was going to become a doctor or join the peace corps. I was thinking mainly of someone who wanted to engage in some sort of "professional" work. In other words, I was hoping for someone who didn't aspire to no more than working in a local gas station or convenience store and spend most nights at locals bars getting sauced then cheating on their wives by sleeping with their sisters-in-law. That was the way that most of the local males in my area ended up. Though the list is lost forever, I do recall that certain things were not on it. Being attractive, tall, rich, having high status, and an impressive education were all absent from my list. Mainly, I wanted someone who was intelligent, emotionally stable, funny, kind, communicative, affectionate and attentive.
I often tell people that they get the spouse they deserve based on their priorities and I completely believe that is true. If you get someone who is a shallow gold-digger, then your priorities in choosing your mate landed you that type of person. It will likely come as no surprise to anyone that many people (from my own culture, I don't say this to Japanese people) disagree with my assertion in this regard. The most vigorous disagreement comes from those who have had bad break-ups and divorces. I'm sure such people feel as if they were wonderful and were tricked, taken advantage of, duped, or witnessed a dramatic change of character when everything went wrong in the relationship. Such people are likely misunderstanding what I mean when I say you get the spouse you "deserve" though this is likely due to my choice of words. I certainly do not mean a person with a bad spouse is a bad person who "deserves" the pain of a rotten relationship. It's more the case that the way in which they rule out certain parties and include other parties results in them getting the person they ended up with. If you're going to reject good people in favor of people who have shortcomings, then you deserve the one with shortcomings. More often than not, beauty is the reason those shortcomings are ignored initially.
Note that I have rarely met anyone who didn't put "attractive" on their list of priorities (near the top or at the top) except my husband and I. That is not to say my husband isn't as cute as all get-out and doesn't have the kindest face ever to exist (even my students will remark immediately after meeting him that he has "kindly eyes"), but rather that that was a "bonus" and not a requirement of my loving him. Inevitably, anyone who puts physical beauty on the list defends this choice by saying that it is natural for humans to want beauty and that you can't marry someone to whom you are not sexually attracted. This is true, but the fact of the matter is that beauty is one of the worst criteria for choosing a mate in modern culture where producing off-spring is not the most important result of the relationship and relationships revolve around higher order needs than putting bison on the table for dinner.
What most people either don't realize or simply fail to consider is that every positive "yin" you get in a person's character will come with a negative "yang". Ambition often brings single-mindedness, a lack of attention, and one's partner appearing lower on the totem pole than a job. My CH's laid-back nature (which I adore) brings a certain amount of laziness and a lack of ambition. Fortunately, these things don't trouble me. In fact, one of the ways in which I have become sanguine about aspects of my mate's character which initially troubled me was to realize that they were the flip-side of the coin. I couldn't have the things I treasured in him without some of the things which may not make my life the easiest. If I can't live with "tails" coming up once in awhile on the character coin, then I can't have "heads". You have to appreciate the good aspects of your partner enough to be patient with the not so good ones or you're simply being unfair.
One of the lessons I teach is about relationships. Part of the lesson is asking the student what they value in a partner. After hearing their lists, I try to impress upon my students that they can't have it all. I also try to dissuade them from making appearance the highest priority by letting them know that beauty lasts 20 years at best and then you live with only the personality. It's the structural integrity of the house that matters, not the attractiveness of the facade.
All of these thoughts about relationships were initiated when I saw pictures of Joseph at Tame Goes Wild with his fiancee. He's getting married very soon and seeing pictures of him and his bride-to-be planting a tree before leaving England for Japan further fueled my belief that they are going to be the type of couple who deserve each other in the best possible way. I met Joseph when he worked as a temporary worker at my former office and he was quite a different person then compared to now (as was I, I'm sure). He's aspiring to be a positive person who contributes to the world in the best possible way and I hope he and his *Twinkle* spend the rest of their lives working together to do all the good things they dream about doing. I'm sure the world will be a better place for their union.
Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. *Twinkle*, and many happy returns!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Atypical Anniversary
How many times have we seen television shows where a special day comes around and the husband forgets the day? The wife starts to simmer as the day wears on and her husband doesn't realize it's her birthday or their anniversary. If the story plays out true to form, the wife will get extremely angry, but the dim-witted husband will eventually make it up to his wife and they'll live happily ever after, or at least until next week's unimaginative cliché-ridden script shows its familiar face. Sometimes I wonder if this scenario actually ever happens in real life. I figure it must happen at least occasionally or this old chestnut of a plot line wouldn't have enough resonance with people to get constantly recycled.
Yesterday was the 21st anniversary of the day which my husband and I regard as our most important (more important than our wedding day itself), the day we admitted our feelings for each other and made a commitment to each other. It was also the first time that it was completely forgotten by one of us. Of course, the one who forgot was me. I'm not a typical wife in most ways. Perhaps I'm simply an atypical female and it has nothing to do with being married. It's hard for me to know since I often feel I can't relate to the Japanese wives around me and I know so few married foreign women. All I can say is that I don't like jewelry, shoes, perfume, or clothes. I'd rather spend all day maintaining computer systems than go shopping. I'd also rather talk to my husband than any other friend and I never complain about him behind his back to other people (though I confess that I often compliment him "behind his back" to other people...who would very much like me to shut up about him.) I also forget birthdays and now anniversaries.
On the left are two individual pieces of cheesecake and chocolate Swiss cake roll. On the right is a mont blanc (chestnut) Swiss cake roll.
Last night my husband came home from work and pulled two (small) boxes of expensive cakes out of his backpack. I told him he was very sweet for going to such trouble to surprise me with something so nice and he smiled at me and asked, "what date is it?" I had no idea what he was referring to until I looked up at the calendar and said, "it's July 18." I was so slow that I didn't get it until I'd said the date out loud and it's enormous importance hit me. That sort of slow-wittedness doesn't just exist in bad comedy scripts.
Fortunately for me, my husband is understanding and wasn't the least bit upset that I didn't remember. I think the fact that I worship him on a daily basis may help mitigate some of the damage of my forgetting our anniversary. Still, I'm hoping that I don't forget again. I'm starting to feel like my brain is a library that has long been filled to capacity and some very important information has been shoved into the darkest, dustiest and hardest to reach areas of my mental library. I want those books to be put out front where they can be easily reached. I'm just not quite sure how to move them there.
Yesterday was the 21st anniversary of the day which my husband and I regard as our most important (more important than our wedding day itself), the day we admitted our feelings for each other and made a commitment to each other. It was also the first time that it was completely forgotten by one of us. Of course, the one who forgot was me. I'm not a typical wife in most ways. Perhaps I'm simply an atypical female and it has nothing to do with being married. It's hard for me to know since I often feel I can't relate to the Japanese wives around me and I know so few married foreign women. All I can say is that I don't like jewelry, shoes, perfume, or clothes. I'd rather spend all day maintaining computer systems than go shopping. I'd also rather talk to my husband than any other friend and I never complain about him behind his back to other people (though I confess that I often compliment him "behind his back" to other people...who would very much like me to shut up about him.) I also forget birthdays and now anniversaries.
On the left are two individual pieces of cheesecake and chocolate Swiss cake roll. On the right is a mont blanc (chestnut) Swiss cake roll.Last night my husband came home from work and pulled two (small) boxes of expensive cakes out of his backpack. I told him he was very sweet for going to such trouble to surprise me with something so nice and he smiled at me and asked, "what date is it?" I had no idea what he was referring to until I looked up at the calendar and said, "it's July 18." I was so slow that I didn't get it until I'd said the date out loud and it's enormous importance hit me. That sort of slow-wittedness doesn't just exist in bad comedy scripts.
Fortunately for me, my husband is understanding and wasn't the least bit upset that I didn't remember. I think the fact that I worship him on a daily basis may help mitigate some of the damage of my forgetting our anniversary. Still, I'm hoping that I don't forget again. I'm starting to feel like my brain is a library that has long been filled to capacity and some very important information has been shoved into the darkest, dustiest and hardest to reach areas of my mental library. I want those books to be put out front where they can be easily reached. I'm just not quite sure how to move them there.
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