Path: ccsf.homeunix.org!ccsf.homeunix.org!news1.wakwak.com!nf1.xephion.ne.jp!onion.ish.org!news.daionet.gr.jp!news.yamada.gr.jp!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!newsfeed.icl.net!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail From: "John W." Newsgroups: fj.life.in-japan Subject: Re: Beauty of a JT letter Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 21:32:07 -0500 Lines: 46 Message-ID: <4112EDA7.5090500@yahoo.com> References: <73fde4f0.0408041120.734ee7ec@posting.google.com> <73fde4f0.0408050859.1a70698e@posting.google.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: news.uni-berlin.de eGPelz5l/RYfr9SnIuks7wddxFtk52rhuqJZn7rg0hb8ec+ofY User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01 X-Accept-Language: ja,en Xref: ccsf.homeunix.org fj.life.in-japan:16060 Heywood Mogroot wrote: > worthj1970@yahoo.com (John W.) wrote in message news:<73fde4f0.0408050859.1a70698e@posting.google.com>... > >>imouttahere@mac.com (Heywood Mogroot) wrote in message news:... >> >>>worthj1970@yahoo.com (John W.) wrote in message news:<73fde4f0.0408041120.734ee7ec@posting.google.com>... >> > >>But what the author misses is that women don't even have the choice to be >>equal with men, and even though laws say otherwise and 'technically' >>they have the same options, the reality is very different, >>particularly outside of Tokyo. > > > yeah, that's how the employment situation now isn't half as bad as it > could be in Japan... > > I almost see the chauvinist side here. Men & women are plumbed > differently, and I do think mothers make better homemakers than > fathers, and due to the childbearing downtime it is inarguably more > efficient to hire a man instead of a woman for a career-track > position. > I've known a lot of Japanese men who have used arguments along the line that women make better homemakers, and to an extent I agree. The only problem is that for most of these men it's a very transparent cop out excuse, because they ignore the other side of that coin, and that is that men have a responsibility to provide a good, male role model for their children and should support their wives. I've worked seemingly endless 60 and 70 hour weeks where I saw my son and wife awake only on weekends. And my own father slaved endlessly to provide for us. But he always made time, and when I had to work those hours I would take a sick day every so often and go on a trip to the zoo or something. I think it's downright irresponsible to live that life for years and years on end. I've never understood why Japanese men believe they *have* to live that life, because very few actually enjoy it, except for the part where they don't have to take directly take care of their families. They might say it's a shame, say it's terrible, say they want to spend more time at home, but at the time their saying this their typically drunk and telling a hostess or some other businessman who feels the same way. OR they're telling it to a young coworker in an attempt to explain that it is their duty to kill theirself for their company. (and I know I'm generalizing based on a relatively small sample; but this IS fjlij.) John W.