Understanding Japanese women

I stumbled upon this e-book, Understanding Japanese Women, as I was surfing around yesterday for English teaching material (yes, I’ve gone back to teaching conversational English as a part-time thing) and I perused it with the expectation that this was going to be a cheesy dating handbook.

But it wasn’t. I was truly surprised to find it not only witty, but full of useful information in just the sampler I downloaded. It may be angled at Western men looking to date Japanese women but I can see that there are layers of cultural tips you can glean if you have a keen interest in socializing with Japanese.

I’m tempted to download the whole e-book because it might help me understand my students who are predominantly female and it also looks like an interesting read about Japanese society and culture.

For example, Japanese women tend to speak negatively of their partners — even in front of them and not in a joking, teasing way. I have a friend who does exactly this and I assumed she was very unhappy with her husband to bring up his bad points over and over again to the point that I thought they had serious marital problems.

After reading this excerpt, I began to understand that this “gesture” just means she likes talking about him but to speak in glowing terms would be like showing off. I guess It’s got some blanket Asian attitude to this point in the sense that it’s bad form to brag about your “assets”. It’s sort of similar to very traditional Asian parents who criticize their children relentlessly in front of others.

Another point I found interesting was the rule of apologizing twice. For any wrongdoing, you should say sorry right after the misdeed and then another time when you next meet. If you don’t do it the second time, it would make your first apology seem insincere.

Also, “yes” doesn’t necessarily mean “yes, I’m listening and understanding what you are saying”, it’s just a translation of hai as a response to whatever you are talking about. You need to ask more specific questions to gauge what the “yes” means.

There was a section where the author describes dating a 29-year-old woman who had a curfew because she still lived with her parents. I just laughed out loud as I could absolutely relate to this.

Many moons ago, the kangaroo also scratched his head over this one. We would wine and dine, head back to his place to canoodle, and around 2am I would pack my things and dash out of the door because I still lived with my folks at the time and my mother, in particular, would’ve had a fit if I didn’t come home.

The kangaroo thought I didn’t like him very much and even consulted his colleague, who was also dating a Singaporean girl. He was reassured it was “normal”. I must say that first month of displaying such “mysterious” behaviour made the chase more exciting for the kangaroo and I enjoyed being the focus of his very ardent attention…

Anyway, back to the e-book: The Japan Times gave an excellent review and this is looking more and more like a great weekend read.

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