Job Discussion Forums

[Yawarakaijin]

I had a very interesting experience about 5 years ago. My girlfriend at the time and I had a date one Saturday evening. Unexpectedly a female friend from Ibaraki came in to Tokyo for a job interview and called up my girlfriend to ask her out for drinks. Seeing as we were living together at the time and saw each other every single day I had no problem with my girlfriend canceling and heading out to meet her friend. That was the end of it.


Now, three weeks later my girlfriend have our regular plans to go out for dinner on Saturday night. Well.. early Saturday morning one of my friends calls me up asking if I would like to join him for some footsol (mini soccer games usually on indoor courts or outdoor tennis courts). "Will there be any foreigners there" I ask. At the time I was working in a kindergarten and rarely had the oppurtunity to just relax and converse with English speaking adults.

So, I do the gentlemanly thing. I make my girlfriend some lunch pick her up some ice cream ( her favourite) and ask her if its ok to cancel our Saturday night plans this week. Well you should have seen the reaction on her face. It was as if I killed her beloved mini daushaund (weiner dog) sorry I dont know the spelling.

Now here's the kicker. When I reminder her of a similar situation a few weeks back she responded with a shriek of ZURUI !! Apparently bringing up a past and relevant situation to argue a present point is considered an underhanded and unethcal way of conducting an argument. I asked quite a few of my Japanese friends about this and the majority agreed with her, that it was not a fair way to conduct a fight.

Well didnt that take the piss out of me. Iwas not quite sure how to make my point or win an argument after that as it is quite a common tactic in solving an NA conflict. Later I learned that japanese couples don't argue to win but they argue to come to an agreement. Not quite sure if that is 100% true but damn I'm in trouble if it is hehe

[Yawarakaijin]

I just wonder where D.O.S's hostility is coming from.

[abufletcher]

[Yawarakaijin]

I hope the humour and the tongue in cheek manner in which I am about to make the following statement can be understood as a joke


I have come to the conclusion that women are a complete mystery no matter which culture they may be from.

[Hoser]

Wasn't this thread closed? Anyways it's open again and I just had a question with regards to something that Paul mentioned regarding "I love you" in Japanese. My girlfriend never says "Ai shiteru" (or however you spell it) but she does say "daisuke." What exactly is she saying? I love you? (which is what I always thought it meant) or "I like you a lot"? (which seems like a ridiculous thing to say from a North American perspective)

[PAULH]

[abufletcher]

I don't think I've heard my Mexican wife say "I love you" or "Te quiero" more than a handful of times in the 24 years we've been married! It's turned into a sort of running joke with us where I try to trick her into saying it and then add it to "the count" and "bank it."

[abufletcher]

And yeah, Hoser, you better check on that Daisuke thing!

[markle]

[Hoser]

Sorry my translation from Japanese into romaji is horrible!

[kdynamic]

Hahahahah I guess your girlfriend is seeing some guy named Daisuke on the side....

[nikkeimama]

After almost 9 years married to my Japanese husband, I don't think he has ever said the "Ai..." phrase to me in Japanese. He has written "I love you" once or twice in birthday cards I think... It has never been important to us to have the words express what we know is there. Now, if my husband started mumbling "Daisuke" in his sleep or a drunken stupor, I'd be really worried!

Back to the original theme of international couples' communication though, our most common communication clash comes from differences in linguistic culture rather than social culture. We communicate purely in Japanese, and he often admits that he forgets that I am in fact not Japanese myself. We have had many misunderstandings rise from the intonation or word choice in my language. Basically, something I say sets him off, and I have no idea why, because I didn't mean it to sound the way he heard it. I then misinterpret his anger, and things spiral out of control. Of course, it happens the other way as well.

In the end though, I think we make things work because we know what challenges we face as an international couple. We understood from day one that we would face many more difficulties than a uni-cultural couple would. I honestly think that we 'work harder' for our marriage than many other couples. There are many things that come up between us that are male-female issues, but we treat them the same as the Japanese-Canadian issues, and always get past them. Too many couples these days start out with expectations too high, and give up too soon when things aren't as easy as they had imagined.

[D.O.S.]

In my experience here it seems that foreign men enjoy a special status.

With Japanese women putting up with drunken salarymen coming home late, little to no attention, and the responsibility for taking care of the children, many seem to desire a foreign husband.

This should be recognised when examining any gaijin/Japanese wife relationships.

Perhaps she finally realised that rather than the shining example of Hollywood Cruise/Coster/Pitt male, she got a dud and isn't happy!

The intercultural/linguistics garbage is a crutch to avoid the truth, IMO!



(and for those commenting on my avatar, it is in fact Christopher Lee, an actor I'm quite fond of and you SHOULD be fond of)

[ObaGol]

Hi guys
I read an interview about something like this.
It was between a Western woman living in Japan and a middle aged Japanese woman I think. But it was a Japanese woman.
And the interviewer chose the interviewee because her parents were divorced and she moved from city to city in her childhood. And I think she was at that age where the pressure mounts to marry someone.

Anyways, the japanese woman brought up some interesting points. She said that, at an early age some japanese girls have a yearning for marrying a husband and live abroad to an English speaking country. Also, because of the Disney movies and their sappy happy endings, these girls get a bigger yearning for a move abroad.

She brought up a point where she is not really looking for a western husband, but is not put off by the idea of dating a western man. She did say that marrying a western man would be too dificult because of the different culture values. But it was wierd because she wanted her husband to cook and clean and look after the children. Which most Japanese men are not really known for. She said it would be nice if she could marry a Japanese man, but incorporate western values.

I guess it just goes to show, that there are many different angles to this discussion.

Personally I think everyone is just gonna end up beige or something. Because every one is hooking up these days. And now that the times are changing, it dosn't really matter where you are from, if you like someone, and that someone likes you back. Then, its all good, right?

[taikibansei]