I just walked down the hall and saw this headline on an article taped to the hallway wall:Japanese Mother's Turn Lunch Making Into High Art.
In Japan, mother's make bento boxes (the equivalent of American lunch boxes minus the chips, cookies, sodas, and pre-packaged stuff) for their children and husbands each day. The bentos are filled with bite-sized portions of many different kinds of Japanese food. According to my students, some mothers spend 15-20 minutes preparing a single bento box.
I once asked a student, "Does your dad ever make your bento?"The student just looked at his friend and burst into laughter, "Eghhhhhhh?" (Japanese sound for surprise)
The thought of a married man in Japan cooking anything is silly. In Japan, gender equality is nothing but a hazy idea that is rumored to exist in other countries. This is the country in which an elected government minister recently called women "baby making machines" and wasn't forced to step down because of his remark.
Japan may be a rich country monetarily, but it is broke poor when it comes to giving both men and women equal opportunities and respect.
1 comment:
Yeah, Andrew. I think unfortunately there are too many monitarily rich countries in this world but far too few countries where people are rich in a social and mental sense :-(
Even in countries where they say that emancipation has taken place, like here in Germany, I encounter the opposite on a daily basis. But it's often even the women who don't recognize and ain't interested in emancipation at all!
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