Japanese Perceptions of What American Husbands Are Like

I hope all mothers in the world had a very special Mother’s Day yesterday, wherever you are in the world. Ours was pretty normal — the kids cleaned the house while I went to the local home center to buy my wife’s favorite flowers, which are called kochoran in Japanese and are apparently some kind of orchid. (When you live in Japan it’s easy to learn the names of flowers, fish etc. in Japanese but have no idea what they’re called in English.) As I was carrying the flowers out of the store, I noticed more than a few housewives glancing at me. At first I chalked it up to the infrequent staring that can happen in Japan, since I was a bit of a rarity being the only foreigner in the large store. Then it occurred to me that the women looked just a little envious, as if they were wishing their husbands would buy flowers like that for them. Japanese women do have a bit of a stylized image of Western men, and my wife’s friends often say things like, “I’ll bet your husband does the dishes every night,” or, “It must be romantic to be married to an American.” I’m generally assumed to hold doors and chairs and say “ladies first” several times a day, cook an occasional special meal, and say “I love you” as I head out the door to work every morning.

Japanese women can have a rather, ah, unique view of Western men.