WARNING WARNING...ok so I need to vent a little here...So if you don't want to know what is going on in my crazy mind then skip to the next post.
So,like I said,..... I have been reading some information on cultural and family things here in Japan that have annoyed me a bit, and so I am thinking on that alot and wondering just what I might hear if I could talk to the many different women I see out on the streets never looking me in the eye and always at the ground as they pass by.
Are they happy, sad, shopping cause they love it,or because there is nothing better to do? Who are they dressing up for if there husbands never come home till they are fast alseep at night with their kids on either side of them? If they could change things what would they be?
Alot of my frustration is about the workaholic lifestyle the men have had here for years and how it affects the husband/wife relationships and family life here with the dad and his kids/wife/family. Too me, it is very sad, and exactly what I and many others have tried hard to prevent from happening in our own lives. By the sounds of it, there might not be too many old school happily married couples nor maybe even some younger generation ones?
Or perhaps, it is my own defintion of "happily married"? There for sure, are alot of women out shopping to buy "cute" things. Is it to soothe themselves as the husband is out with the guys, from work or with other women? :-( What do they do with all the stuff they buy in their tiny little apartments? Do they have garage sales-I have yet to see one?
I think by what I hear and read, the younger generation is hopefully trying to change that and I hope CJ and I might be able to impact that as well when he is here. I know I am going to put up the fight on my end of the bargin and try and make it known that the family group is more important at night, than time with the work family and being out at the bars drinking all night long. I know I can't change a culture, but I can at least model and be supportive of behavior I see as more positive and or desirable?
Again as I travel, it is just another time and another place with the same old male chauvenistic ways. UGH!!
So you can see, as we live here longer we learn a bit more and experience some of the not so positive things(at least in my mind)and ways in which they live as a culture. I knew this before I came, but to live it,hear and see some of it is another thing. It was my biggest concern I voiced to CJ before I came and it will continue to be my concern and something I will try to learn more about and find some possible understanding of if possible.
In one source I read,...It is like the dad is not even a part of the family. He is just the money source and the wife and kids have their life and he has his with his work family. He has babies with her, and then once she is a mom no more intimacy with her (possibly with other women?). He may even sleep in a seperate room so as not to disturb her and the children who often sleep together when he comes home late from work and drunk at night.Is this really something to emulate or pass on to the next generation? The sad part for me is that they many don't know any different. This is what it is, how they have been raised. Heck, I know it would make me want to stay single and dating and not get married if that was the case. Seems a lonely existance and perhaps I speak of that from some of my own personal experience, perhaps even more than I might like to admit. So yes... here I am now admitting it. It does get sad and lonely at times, and when you aren't a career women such as I, you even question it more and wonder what is this life really all about. What is important, money, things, time with each other.....and how do you make it all work so your both satisfied, fulfilled and happy?
Ok so thanks for listening..the door bell just rang........................
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