Another disclaimer:  I am not bringing men into the equation because men seem to all know the size of each others’ packages, and if they talk about it over beers, that’s their business.  I seriously doubt they do.  Most men I know don’t discuss such things.  Further, I am removing working women from the equation as well because they are very rarely the offenders.  Obviously, I am writing about those stay at home women who talk too much about money.

Although times are tougher and companies are cutting back on expat packages or sending expats back home, there are still a good number of families here who are living the high life.  There are families who get the nearly million yen a month housing allowance, the big COLA adjustment to account for the weakening dollar, a 100% tuition allowance for all of their children to attend international preschools/schools, electricity allowances, cable allowances, one or two free business class flights back home a year for every member of the family, etc., etc.  In fact, there are still a good many of these families, and in certain neighborhoods, they outnumber the families who don’t receive the ”full package.”  Most women recognize that they are getting a really sweet deal with what may amount to a couple hundred thousand or even a half million dollars in additional compensation a year or more, and most are silent about it or if they need to talk about it express only gratitude for the windfall.   Okay, just writing about these families makes me envy the packages they receive, but I’d never say that in public to any of them.

There are a few women out there who are so arrogant that they act as though they are entitled to all the perks of living in Tokyo.  These women are the exception and not the rule, but they are not so uncommon.  There’s no set pattern to discern from where these women hail, some are Midwestern, some are New Yorker types, and a good number don’t actually come from the United States but from other parts of the world such as India or France or England or Singapore or…you get the point.  I’m not just picking on American women or singling them out.  The only thing these offenders seem to have in common is their need to be better than the others around them. 

I have to wonder what goes through the mind of one of these women.  Does she not recognize that the English-speaking expat community is small enough that there’s probably only a one degree separation for every member?  Does she not recognize that the woman about whom she complains to herself in the grocery store for accidentally bumping a cart may hear her and may be the wife of her husband’s most profitable client (or may be her husband’s most profitable client) and may recognize the wife from a photo on her husband’s desk?  Does she not ever consider that the mom on the playground to whom she is bragging that her son is a sure shot to get into a certain school because he is a “genius” or “gifted” may actually sit on the board of directors for that school or may be best friends or married to someone who sits on the board?  Does she not realize that the woman to whom she is gossiping on the playground about another person may actually know that other person and be close friends with him or her?  Does she not know that she may one day be stuck at a dinner party sitting next to that other person who knows all about what she said to her friend on the playground? 

Some oblivious women are actually harming their husbands’ careers or severely shortening their duration of living the “high life” and have no idea they’re doing it.  I may be just another expat housewife, and my husband is who he is, but when I go anywhere, I try to think about who I may run in to while I am out.  I have gotten in the habit of carefully tailoring my words so as not to do or say anything that could hurt my husband’s career in any way or alienate me from someone who may be married to someone or who knows someone who knows someone else who may in any way impact anything having to do with his ability to get along with the members of this community.  It’s way too small a community to not consider this every time I step out of the house.  It influences the clothing I wear when I go out, how I do my make-up, whether I’ve had a breath mint, whether I smile at the man on the escalator whose child screams uncontrollably while kicking me the whole way up because I never know if my husband, who is meeting me at the top of the escalator, will say “hey, so and so!  Have you met my wife?”  I never know what may offend someone, so I just don’t share anything other than pleasantries with virtual strangers because today’s stranger may be tomorrow’s thorn in the side.

So, as an expat woman who meets a lot of other expat women, and hears a whole lot, this is something we all seriously need to think about when we come over here.  Don’t alienate yourself within a week of being over here by acting like a complete ass.  Don’t brag about how much your apartment costs, don’t brag about the fact that you just shelled out a hundred grand to put all four of your kids into private schools when you didn’t, don’t brag about flying home twice a year business class, and don’t ever say that your family just won’t fly anything other than business class when everyone knows full well that the only reason you’re flying business class is because someone else is paying for it.  Don’t pretend that the money from the expat package that is provided to your family is in any way an entitlement.  In fact, don’t brag about anything in your or your husband’s expat packages.  Why?  Because about half of the families get big packages and find it completely distasteful to discuss them in public, and the other half don’t get anything other than a “thanks for coming here.”  You never know which you are talking to.  That otherwise put together woman on the playground may be struggling to come up with the $30,000 it takes to put each of her three kids into private school and may be thinking about how arrogant you are for thinking she cares that your kids all go to ASIJ on the company’s dime.  It’s all in the way you talk about things.  Don’t presume everyone is rich here, and don’t poor mouth either.  When you are obviously not poor, and you poor mouth, you just look foolish.  In fact, just never discuss money in public.  This is almost a rule of law back in the United States, so why is it forgotten the minute some women get off the plane in Japan? 

Wow, I didn’t mean to rant quite that much.  Sorry about that.

So this year, I thought maybe I’d get the process started a little early and try to figure out when the plum blossoms bloom.  Last year, I just happened upon them in a park and mistook them for cherry blossoms, but of course quickly figured out that they couldn’t possibly be cherries, which I had been told didn’t bloom until March.  So based on that, I think I’m going to find some place to go look at the plum blossoms, maybe make a family picnic of it or something.  It’ll be much colder than when the cherry blossoms bloom, but who cares, right?  Picnics are fun!

This Winter has been quite mild, so the blossoms are starting to appear earlier than last year.  There’s a house near my window that has a plum tree in the back yard.  The area is secluded and blocked from the usually gusty winds that blow around my neighborhood, so it seems to be a few degrees warmer than the surrounding area.  This little tree has begun to bloom and looks so beautiful.  Plum blossoms, or “Ume,” are not as popular as “Sakura,” cherry blossoms, maybe because of the time of year that they bloom, I don’t know, but the fragrance is much nicer, and the parks are generally much emptier, so the whole Ume experience is just really pleasant.

In the Tokyo area, I’d recommend going to Koishikawa Kurakuen, a park that’s only about a 7 minute walk from the Iidabashi station on the Nanboku line.  Koishikawa Kurakuen is full of traditional Japanese and Chinese garden settings, and embodies the image I had of Japan before I moved here.  The entry fee is 300 yen, but it is one of the better places to view the blossoms. 

Ume Matsuri (plum blossom festival) usually begins in mid-February and goes to early March, depending on the weather.  (And to the horticulturists who may be reading, I know the photo is of a cherry blossom, I couldn’t find any I took last year of the plum blossoms.  Sorry.)

Why is Denny’s a curry house?  Why can’t I get a grand slam breakfast?  Where’s the skillet meals, the sausage, bacon, eggs any way I want?  Where’s the hash browns, the little glass of orange juice (okay, you can get that)?  Every once and a while I want a good, cheap American style diner breakfast, and Denny’s embodies that.  It’s the place you go to with your 80 year old grandma on a Saturday morning in January to have coffee, the place where you go with your college friends at 3 am for eggs and french toast, the place you go to eat with your new husband when you only have 12 dollars between you.  But here, it’s curry, curry and more curry.  I don’t find Japanese curries all that appetizing.  They’re sort of blander, less flavorful, boring bastardizations of the much better Indian or Thai curries.  Maybe they’re an acquired taste, but not a taste I ever actually want to acquire, really.  But it’s a great thing that I can find some of the best Indian and Thai curries I have ever eaten, and these restaurants are all over Tokyo.  Just close your eyes, point, and you’re good.  But I really would like Denny’s to serve the Grand Slam.

And another thing I hate about Japan are women who mistake generalized and often thoughtless politeness as a come-on.  Okay, so maybe it’s just a couple of them, but they annoy me to no end.  There are women who think if a Western man glances or makes any sort of eye contact or polite smile on the street then that man must find them really attractive.  Not true.  Fact in point, Western men are raised to be polite to women, even if they never intend to see that woman again, and even if that woman bears a striking resemblance to Quasimodo, which might likely induce more stares, glances or awkward smiles.  It’s sort of ingrained in them to politely glance and smile at women when they move over on a sidewalk or hold a door.  Again, even if the woman hit every branch of the ugly tree on her way to the ground, Western men still do this.  When I went back to America the last time, I couldn’t count the number of times a strange man said hello, nodded, glanced, smiled or merely gruffed when he glanced and moved over on a sidewalk or held a door for me.  It’s not that I am the most beautiful woman on the face of the planet – I am not of course – but it is that I am in fact a woman.  I could describe what I look like, but it is unique enough that my identity would be revealed to many people who know me, and yes, I can say that I used to be quite the looker in my former life, enough so to have attracted the eye of a current A-list movie star while sitting in a bar in NYC (I have witnesses, and I hope they don’t read this blog, because they could guess who I am based on that fact alone).  And I think there is something about how American men are trained by their fathers to do this that subconsciously sticks with them the rest of their lives.  I seriously doubt most of them even know that they’re doing it.  Japanese men are always nodding and smiling at me on the sidewalk, and I seriously doubt that every one who does this finds me attractive.  I have no illusions or delusions – what have you.  But of course, if I make mention of this to a Japanese woman, she would likely dismiss me as a liar.  No, it’s just that I look different than the others in the crowd.  I may actually be attractive, but it’s more likely that I simply bear no resemblance to the people around me, and that automatically will catch the eye. 

Another thing I have a hard time tolerating is the over-abundance of gossip.  For the most part, I am highly gossip-averse and change the subject when someone tries to either prod me for information or try to share something with me about another person.  I don’t care and certainly don’t want to hear about whether Joe in Accounting is interested in sleeping with Megumi in Marketing.  For all I know, poor Joe may have just been seen holding the elevator door for her (something poor Joe may not know is a clear indication that he is sexually attracted to Megumi).  But there are women out there who find it life’s ambition to smear Joe through the mud with all the girls in the office and besmirch poor Megumi’s character in the process.  And to make matters worse, Megumi, who probably knew the rumors would ensue, may actually think Joe is attracted to her now and may not be providing him the proper business support necessary to make his job easier, and may now be uncomfortable around him and may be avoiding him entirely.  Of course, pointing out that Western men will hold elevator doors for anyone coming in the direction of an elevator doesn’t go over well.  Something about the gossip’s mind can’t seem to get around that little fact.  And nobody has clued poor Joe into the fact that he should never hold the elevator door for any woman with whom he works.  Of course, the other problem is that the gossip never thinks that she has caused any great problem or made herself look worse in front of her Western colleagues, who now all presume that she is likewise spreading inappropriate innuendo about them in the office.  This sort of behaviour is condoned and expected in Japan.  While it occurs in the US as well, I’ve never seen anything quite as bad as here.  Apparently, the general practices of Japanese men in their relations to Japanese women are so kata-ized that to step outside of the unspoken boundaries that are not even known to Western men results in a lot of false crap being started by nosy and bored office ladies who really should get back to typing and setting up dinner reservations for their boss and his wife.  After having tried to make friends with some of the women in my husband’s office, I have decided that it’s a really bad idea, and I wouldn’t generally recommend it.  Of course, that is, unless the woman actually has some understanding of how Western men think and act around women in general.  They may be okay, but I’m still wary. 

I have a small handful of Japanese women friends.  All of them are married to Western men or Westernized Japanese men. It isn’t by any conscious choice that I’ve managed to only befriend these sort of women.  It’s just so far, I’ve liked these women and haven’t found any other Japanese women, either single or married to Japanese men, with whom I have anything in common or who won’t stop with the idiotic gossiping and prodding for personal information.  They tend to not want to be friends when they find out I am not going to give them any intimate details of my personal home life or to be very interested in the nasty gossip they want to share.  Maybe it’s just that I have really bad luck with only having met the worst possible potential friends, or that I am somehow afraid to step outside of my “enclave” as one such gossipy troublemaker recently told me in an unsolicited email.  I know there have to be friendly, kind, and genuinely likable Japanese women out there with whomI have enough in common to actually be friends.  But so far, I’m coming up snake-eyes.

As much as I miss my home, my family, everything about America, there’s still a sense of innocense in the things kids do in Japan that makes me happy to be living in such a safe country.  In the US, I locked the doors every night, checked twice, kept the car doors locked when I drove, never left my purse more than a foot or two from my body, if I set it down at all.  Never would I have left a pram sitting on the sidewalk outside of a restaurant (something I see daily) or would I have felt safe letting one of my children run ahead of me through a crowd.  Here, I don’t think of these things, and if I think of these things – like when I wrote this post – I appreciate that I don’t feel that I have to worry about my safety.

This is just one more of the things I love about Japan.

There is no real consensus on how much additional pay is offered in expat packages, housing allowances, or expense allowances to relocating employees, and how much your company offers will be a key factor in what kind of apartment that you rent.  Getting into an apartment in Tokyo is expensive.  Most apartment companies charge between 4 and 6 months rent as a deposit, then up to two months rent in key money, plus one month plus five percent in agency fees.  Given that apartments in expat areas range in price from $3000 to $20,000 per month in rent, an initial payment of between 5 and 9 months rent is a lot of money, even at the lower rent amounts.  If your company pays the upfront costs, and you can swing the additional monthly rent, then I would recommend getting as much apartment as you can afford.  There are two reasons: 1) the more money you spend, the larger the apartment you can get; and 2) there are significant tax deductions for housing costs.  If you can maximize the tax deduction, then try to do so.  Also, if your company pays your rent for you, up to a certain yen amount, then take the maximum benefit offered.  If you don’t maximize, you most likely will not get the difference in cash from your company, and you won’t get the maximum tax deduction.  If, however, your company pays you a lump sum in cash to cover housing expenses, then the extra cash you keep in your pocket by taking the smaller apartment will go a long way to offset the awful exchange rates between the dollar and yen and the Euro and yen.  It’s your decision.

So now that you’ve decided on a budget for an apartment, the next step is to get an agent.  You can’t rent an apartment in Tokyo without an agent (well, you can, but it is much harder to do so because the management companies prefer to deal with agents and not prospective tenants).  There are several websites for agency services in Tokyo, and most if not all of them list apartments that are currently for rent.  Here are a few:  Prime Properties, Century 21, Mori Living to get you started.  These aren’t the least expensive by any means, in fact, they may be among the most expensive, but they are a good starting point and will give you an idea of apartment costs and sizes.  Your company may actually dictate which agency you can use, in which case, the agent will contact you and arrange for you to view properties.

So what should you bring and what should you not bring?

Bring: a queen sized bed with a good mattress;  Don’t Bring: a king sized bed - it isn’t likely to fit into your bedroom, and if it does, you won’t have room for anything else.

Bring: bed sheets, bath towels, anti-perspirant, fluoride toothpaste; Don’t Bring: laundry detergent, kitchen cleaning supplies – the Japanese products are very inexpensive and work very well.

Bring: frying pans, kettles, cooking utensils that fit on your stovetop; Don’t Bring: The large turkey roasting pan, 11×9 baking pans and sheets, large muffin pans, or anything designed to fit inside the oven that is over 10 inces wide or tall – unless you get a really posh place, it won’t fit into the oven, presuming you even get an oven.

Bring: the children; Don’t Bring: the pets.  This is highly controversial, but it can be very difficult to import your pet without either a long quarantine, or at least six months notice of moving to complete the pet evaluation and rabies series that is required to import your pet.  If your beloved Fido is elderly, then please do him the favor of finding him a loving home with a relative before you move.  On top of it, it can be hard to find an apartment that allows pets (except where the celebrities live, they all have long haired chihuahuas, sometimes 5 or 6 of them).  If you do find an apartment, the pet fees are much higher than in the US.

Bring: your laptop, home PC, ipod, appleTV, your DVD collection, your toaster, coffee maker; Don’t Bring: rice cooker, KitchenAid mixer, large countertop appliances – you may not actually have countertop space for them in your kitchen, and why would you bring a cheapie rice cooker into Japan?

Bring: your health records, your kids’ health records, all important paperwork you could conceivably need in the next three years.  If you put any of these things in storage, you will regret it.  Better to have important paperwork and not need it than to have put it in storage and need it a month after you get here.

The economy right now stinks worldwide, but maybe it stinks just a little less in Japan.  If you get the opportunity to live here for three years, now may really be the time.

But please be respectful of the fact that it is a business.  Please don’t do this.

I guess I could always go to Bic Camera and get a nice one that will play all my US DVDs, but they’re so much more expensive, and I really don’t want to spend a ton of money on something that a kid may destroy within a few months.  But Bic Camera is great.  Particularly if you get the point card.  The points can add up quickly.  If you buy a flat panel TV, for example, you can get a DVD player for free using points (depending on how expensive the TV and DVD player are, of course, but it’s generally 10% of the value of the TV in points).  You can also get all the stuff you need for a new apartment – vacuum cleaner, rice cooker, fish broiler if you don’t have one installed already, coffee pots, iron, beds and bedding (limited, but decent), washers and dryers, bicycles, luxury goods, eyeglasses and contact lenses, cameras and video recorders of course (although the prices are generally more on these items than the exact items in the US), computers, printers….you get the idea.  There are Bic Camera stores throughout Tokyo.  I generally head to Shinjuku or Yurakucho, but there are many locations. 

But alas, Bic Camera has enough of our money, so I’m off to wade through the trash of DonQ, and get a new DVD player there.  Hope they have one left in stock.

So what shocked me going back to the US?  When we got off the plane, I guess I had the biggest shock just standing in the US customs line.  We obviously stood in line with all the American passport holders and not the line with the foreigners who landed with us.  The man standing directly in front of me in line was a good 6’3″, 240 lbs. maybe, and he towered over us like a rotund giant.  Then I looked around at everyone else standing in line.   They all seemed so huge!  My first thought was “What has happened to Americans in the short time I’ve been gone?  Have they all taken growth hormones and stuffed themselves with calzones?”  See in Japan, I feel like an Amazon woman.  I have boobs and hips and height.  About the only thing that’s not big on my body in Japan are my feet, which are average size here, and on the smallish side in the US.   Oh and my hands, which are freakishly small.  But in the US, I felt absolutely small.  I wear a size small or medium top, depending on whether the clothing item fits around my chest.  And I wear a 6 or 8 bottom.  Sometimes 10 if the item is ultra high end designer, which I don’t generally buy because a) I can’t really afford high end designer clothing and b) I’ve had a hang-up about wearing anything with double digits since I got out of grad school, where I got decidedly plump. 

Then, walking around the airport, I noticed that most people were speaking English.  Of course they were.  But I had become so accustomed to hearing Japanese that the English startled me.  Then we ate at a chain restaurant in the airport waiting for a connecting flight, and the service was horrible!  Really bad, actually.  I don’t generally complain, but asking for a cup of coffee three times, and then deciding I could get it quicker if I went back into the kitchen and got it myself forced me to do so.  So what did the manager say?  He made some excuse about hard times and the economy, and not being able to force the waitstaff to smile or to be rushed to get a cup of coffee for a cranky airline passenger.  Then he got indignant about me being one foot into the kitchen.  My husband just said I got too used to the service in Japan, where waitstaff is always polite and prompt with service, except on rare occasions that result in managers begging for an apology.  I was in the US for a month, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say restaurant service in the US generally sucks even in nice establishments.  Maybe it’s the casual nature of Americans, the squatting at the table to take an order, the use of language that is not completely professional, the general attitude, or maybe it is that Americans have stopped teaching the younger generations to take pride in anything and everything they do.  I honestly didn’t enjoy going out to eat nearly as much as I thought I would.

And I didn’t enjoy the junk food.  Everything I thought I wanted to eat – a Burger King whopper (TMI, but I threw it up not ten minutes after I ate it), some Taco Bell, cheesecake, mexican food, Cracker Barrel – didn’t sound or taste so good when I found myself trying to choke it down once I got it.  I have to admit, though, I did miss my sister’s sweet potato souffle.  She makes it with orange juice and nutmeg, and a little skim milk, and it was the highlight of the holiday meal.  In general, even when I wasn’t in a hotel, I found myself beelining it to the asian food aisle of the grocery store and trying to find asian markets so I could buy ingredients to cook the foods I most wanted to eat.  I was really surprised by that, actually.

But one thing I wasn’t at all shocked by, and that I most enjoyed, was the shopping.  There’s nothing better than going to a kid’s store and buying little girl tops for $4.99 each, getting socks for $1.50, pants for $16.00, or a boy’s fleece hoodie for $12, jeans for a lot less than in Japan, athletic shoes for around $50 or less for the kids, and about that much for me.  Or high end designer jeans on sale for less than $100, getting hemming at any dry cleaner for $4 a leg, Ferragamo shoes for $170 when they cost almost Y100,000 here.  I really enjoyed shopping, particularly at the outlet malls.  The whole concept of an outlet mall thrills me.  Oh, and Walmart and Target.  I got enough toiletries and vitamins to last the family a year.  The only thing that sucked was getting it all home, but at least the luggage at the outlet mall where I bought it was cheap.  But the best thing was going into any store and knowing they would have my size, and it would fit through the shoulders, in the arms, throught the waist and hips.   And it would all cost at most half of what it would in Japan.

Regardless, the most shocking thing about going back was the change in landscape of my old hometown.  I’m not going to say where I grew up, except that it is south of the Mason Dixon line, but it had been a while since I went back.  Maybe ten years.  But there are new roads, wider roads, new highways, buildings, faces.  My old hometown isn’t were I grew up.  I had trouble recognizing the landscape because there are so many changes.

But having been back in Japan for a while since the US trip, it really feels like home to me now.

I got on the scale, and I’ve lost about eight pounds in the past week.  That can’t be healthy.  It’s kind of spooking me a little.  Admittedly, the Holidays this year were more stressful than usual, with the US economy being what it is, the yen-dollar exchange rate sucking big time, and the demands that I’ve put on myself over family stuff.  Maybe I’ve just stressed myself to the point where my body is rebelling.  I otherwise feel healthy, but eight pounds in a week just doesn’t sound right to me.

Maybe I shouldn’t question a gift like instant weight loss.  That’s almost un-womanly.

So, let’s see, my last blog entry was a little number about how I’ve occasionally experienced racism while living in Japan.  I was surprised by some of the comments, mostly not approved for posting, that I received from people who had the same or worse experiences living in a foreign country and were surprised by how differently they were treated.  I guess many of us expect to be treated equally, regardless of race, and are shocked that lo and behold, there are good and bad people in every culture.  Of course, there was one hate comment, bitter and amusing, but I digress.  Some people are just too touchy and perceive generalized critiques as personal insults.  Life would be better if people didn’t internalize everything written on the internet.

Before I moved to Japan, I had this image of a country full of extremely well mannered, impeccably dressed, perfect people.  When I got here, I found that the Japanese are just like people in any other country.  There are extremely well mannered, impeccably dressed, near-perfect people roaming about; but then there are others who are pretty awful to outsiders.  And then there are those who hate so much that I could dare point out that I’ve experienced racism, and a few other things, since I moved here that they feel the need to comment and call me names that do nothing more than prove the point I was trying to make with the post in the first place.  So maybe to whatever caused the complete deleting of my otherwise innocuous blog, I must offer thanks.  At least it took away some of the comments I had to delete so as to keep this blog in the PG category.

So a little about me.  I am a woman, a professional, who followed my husband to Japan from the United States.  I’m not very young, as I said above, middle-aged.  I have children.  I have a temper.  I sometimes ramble about things.  I have a solid group of friends both in the United States and Japan, and I have a husband who I like a good bit.

I originally started this blog to give a low-down of the good and bad about living in Japan.  There are good things and bad things, of course.  Just as there are good and bad things about living anywhere. 

So what are some of the good things?  Well, the food is good usually, unless you favor Italian food.  I haven’t found very many good Italian restaurants in Tokyo.  There are a couple, but even they rank mediocre compared to say “Olive Garden.”  But in general, the food is exceptionally good.  Korean-inspired cuisine is probably the best non-native food that I have had here.  Portions are in control, unlike the United States where restaurants serve food for three or four people on every plate for ten bucks.  Nightlife in Tokyo is good, and there’s always something to do.  Unfortunately, drinking is expensive, not that I drink much or go out to bars that often (not saying I don’t go to bars, I do.  I easily pass for 30, so even though I am much older, I don’t necessarily feel out of place going out and having a great time).  The lifestyle of an expat is pretty good.  To be honest, many foreign companies (i.e., non-Japanese companies) pay employees willing to drag their families to the other side of the world pretty well.  I guess one of the really good things about choosing to live in Japan as an expat is the lifestyle and the income.  I’d be lying if I didn’t say the money wasn’t a big perk.  Then there are the festivals and national holidays.  There are too many festivals to count, and Japan has far more holidays than the US, so getting three day weekends here and there is very nice indeed.  There are lots of other good things, and I will eventually begin posting about them.

So what are some of the bad things?  Well, first, there’s the language barrier.  Japanese is a very difficult language to learn.  Then there are the cultural differences.  What may seem normal and mainstream in Japan can seem odd, and even humorous, to outsiders from the West.  I’m sure it’s the same to Japanese when they come to the US to live, or anywhere else for that matter.  Then there is the reality that you will not likely have many Japanese friends.  It’s an unfortunate reality, particularly for women.  Then there’s the reality that more than a minority of Japanese have a negative view toward Americans and American men in general, based on stereotypes perpetuated by the bad seeds among the expat population that fill the ads in Metropolis Magazine.  Many view American men as only coming to Asia for one reason – the women.  That’s not always the case, but it’s often the belief.  Of course, there are those men who come over here to fulfill some sort of fetish, but there are those who are legitimately in Asia to earn a living.  Even men who spend a great deal of time with their families are suspected of untoward behavior if they occasionally go to a bar without the spouse in tow.  Gossip among the very small community can be fierce, believe me.  But, the feeling of isolation many people experience when they first come to Japan is probably the worst thing.  It is really hard to make friends with people who don’t speak the same language.  But it is very easy to make friends with other expat women.  Beyond easy.  Of course, the result is that expats end up living in a bubble.  One that is viewed as affluent and exclusionary by many Japanese.  Maybe this bubble is, but many expats view the Japanese as exclusionary as well.  Oh, and one of the bad but tolerable things is that despite the plethora of places to shop, shopping in Tokyo is not that great.  There’s not enough variety, clothing is way overpriced, toiletries are not that good compared with Western products, and even women like me, tall and athletic with very little body fat, find it difficult to find anything fashionable or attractive that will fit except at Zara or Banana Republic or the ultra high end boutiques that fill Omote Sando and Roppongi Hills.  Height, breast size, and having any sort of curve to the rear can be a real curse in Japan.

I know I haven’t said much in eleven hundred or so words, but I have to say that I am generally happy to be living in Japan.  I enjoy it.