Marvel wrote:
> O.K. first of all...no laughing ...yet.
> 
> Afterwards have at it.
> 
> My wife (Japanese) and her parents (also Japanese) In Osaka.
> We go by her aunt and uncles house to visit...(my first visit to their home)
> The uncle brings home a couple of giant trays of assorted sushi rolls.
> Nothing weird yet.
> So we are watching wide screen tv sipping beer eating.
> All is well.
> enter weird part.
> Wifes mom, after having eaten much takes off her pants (she has on under 
> garments)...nothing lude, and is manuevering around the house refilling 
> drinks etc....
> 
> I ask my wife WTF is that all about and the wife says :it is a way of 
> showing satisfaction".
> 
> My question...WTF is up..is this some kind of retarded thing or what?.
> 
> Is this true or has the mom in law just lost her mind?

Sort of a mukashi banashi, but when I first started coming to Japan 
regularly in 1978, we'd take the bus from Narita to Tokyo-eki and the 
Hikari to Hamamatsu.

Most of the regular salaryman types still wore the long-legged underwear 
and the string-top t-shirts.  It was normal on long distance trains to 
see men taking off their pants and white shirts and folding them neatly 
so they wouldn't get wrinkled by just sitting around.  You'd also see 
women stripping down to their slips and folding up their dresses for the 
same reason.  There never seemed to be any additional hanky-panky as a 
result, which was sort of an inscrutable mystery for us foreigners ... 
who would have hankied and pankied our asses off if offered the chance.

IIRC, we used to see it on any train that covered long distances.  In 
those days the Tokaido-sen tokkyu were still competition as the prices 
were about 60% of the shinkansen.  Of course, that was also in the days 
when there were no non-smoking cars and the shinkansen had a sit-down 
dining car ...

-- 
CL