Learn to be nice to your wife, Japan style

[Cowperson]

Amusing look at attitudes in Japan where a recent change in laws allows women to claim half the pensions of "salarymen."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=artslot

Cowperson

[redforever]

I suspect some men in Japan are addressing the issue because they fear impending divorce and financial ruin, I suspect some want to address it to prevent impending divorce, I suspect some are addressing the issue because they truly want to change. And I would certainly think the new law has empowered women. They will no longer be willing to stay in marriages with no emotion and will no longer have to fear being left penniless.

I suspect the husband/wife roles in many East Asian countries are quite similar. I think many from the western part of the world are perhaps somewhat shocked that it can be so different there but it is a cultural thing. I know a young man from Thailand, 28, and he told me his Mom was not feeling well. I said well make sure you tell her that you love her and he just kept saying "she knows". It was not until the mother was finally hospitalized that he finally told her he loved her.

Customs are different in every country, they can be different in every province or state within countries too. Travel exposes us to those differences.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Love this quote:

Men near the end of their corporate lives, he said, are especially edgy. "To be divorced is the equivalent of being declared dead -- because we can't take care of ourselves," Amano said.

When his wife told him eight years ago that she was "99 percent" certain she was going to dump him, Amano said, the only things he then knew how to do in the kitchen were to fry eggs and pour boiled water over noodles.
Since then, in addition to learning how to listen and talk to a wife he had ignored for two decades, Amano said, he has learned how to take out the trash, clean the house and cook.