From "Older Japanese men, lost in the kitchen, turn to housework school" (WaPo).
At housework school, old men meet other other old men:
Five of them were fixing a meal recently, Kaneko standing tall in front of the stove and helming the frying pan as the others took turns placing mounds of minced chicken in oil.
“Don’t overdo it,” he warned 80-year-old Kikuo Yano, laughing as he rounded out the nuggets with a spoon. Yano has been taking classes this fall to surprise his wife of 43 years.
“All this time my wife has done everything,” the retired architect acknowledged. “I haven’t done anything around the house. If I don’t know how to, I guess there’s nothing I can do. But if I learn how to do it, then it’s time I help.”
He now wakes up early to press his clothes. Ten times he has practiced a curry dish he plans on serving his family on New Year’s Day. “You see this shirt?” he says, running his hands up and down the sleeve, a smile stretching across his face. “I ironed it myself."
Out with the old — "men should be ashamed" — and in with the new — "I ironed it myself."
I like the idea of taking distinct pride in doing the humble, simple, concrete things in life. It's a shame to imbue these things with shame (especially if that is part of system of subordinating others).
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The humble, simple, concrete things in life are so much more.
“It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing on a beam, white-washing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God rsome glory if being in His grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives Him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory, too. God is so great that all things give him glory if you mean that they should.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins
Of all the women I've ever been with, Japanese women were the worst. It's not even close. Everything from intimacy to domesticity to external relationships feels like they're acting. I have a reasonable enough frame of reference with other East Asians to know this subjectively. The creepiest part is how long they can maintain the facade.
People always scratch their heads about Japan's fertility rate. I don't. Makes perfect sense to me. Good for these old timers.
Good lord. They can lean those tasks in minutes.
Male stuff is more than just strength and speed. Women's empathy only extends to fellow victims though.
My father, born circa 1920, was very much in a similar position, though as my parents grew older my mother did give him some gentle instruction as her ability to complete housework unaided declined. She had done the same earlier, so my brother and I were well acquainted with the workings of washing machines and stoves :)
I like the idea of taking distinct pride in doing the humble, simple, concrete things in life.
If I may be permitted a 'get off my lawn' moment, admiration for doing a humble, and even distasteful, task well ala Mike Rowe and 'Dirty Jobs' was once pretty common it seems to me. There was no shame in being poor if you were clean and tidy rather than slovenly which implied your poverty was the result of sloth rather than circumstance. We place too much emphasis on attempting to being clever rather than industrious (look at the squeeing attending Musk's demand Twitter employees be 'hard core'), and too much on dishevelment as a mark of authenticity (Fetterman's hoodies).
"They can lean those tasks in minutes."
Acting as though it's an elaborate skill that must be studied and learned is part of a system of division of labor and justifying not doing the work. I'll do it wrong! I'll mess it up! I'll only make more work for her because she'll have to fix my mistakes and redo it!
But on the other hand, having a school and taking lessons shows respect for the work and makes a ritual out of entering on a new path.
And there are always levels of doing work. Surely cooking is something that can always go to a higher level, but cleaning has lots of aspects to it. There are details to doing laundry, making beds, mending clothing. Some of the work is seeing where work needs to be done and not needing to be told this has to be done. There's an executive level to running a household: planning, being efficient, purchasing supplies.
How do you load a dishwasher? How do you put dishes and kitchen equipment in cabinets? How do you fold clothing? How do you shop for food? How do you put food away and when do you throw things out?
When I was in high school, the girls were required to take an entire year of home economics! And we didn't even study cleaning.
Aren't these schools,
Assembling a crowd to engage in housework promiscuity?
Lucky thing they're not in red China
Sonsie said...Good lord. They can lean those tasks in minutes.
You can learn how to wash a dish in minutes, you can learn how to chop vegetables in minutes, you can learn how to vacuum a carpet in minutes--but not the same minutes. There are a hundred things you can learn "in minutes" but they add up to hours. Shopping takes hours and cooking can take a lifetime.
My wife has the diploma that her great grandmother received in household management from a university in Switzerland. Her mother had a large book (about 500 pages) on housekeeping that I found so interesting, she gave it to me.
In the Seventies, they used to have WOW (women on wheels) classes to teach adult women how to change a car tire, deal with radiators, and change the oil. Those are pretty good skills all kids should learn in school. I took shop, mechanical and architectural drafting instead of home economics. They have served me well. And back then, nobody tried to get me to cut off my breasts because I preferred "boy skills."
The Seventies were in many ways our cultural zenith.
This doesn't seem to jive with the soccer players' neat lockerroom post.
Mead, please tell us - assure us - that you helped in the kitchen yesterday, and that this isn’t Ann communicating to a different room in the house through the blog.
(“ but cleaning has lots of aspects to it.” On this, I absolutely agree. I have learned the relationship and feel-good value of doing work in the house. But despite my engagement, it is true that many times what I cleaned will get re-cleaned in some fashion or at least touched up. My wife has very, very high standards. My mom basically had no minimum standards or interest. So I’ve been blessed to have to learn to step up.)
I think the older men enrolling in these classes is particularly sweet if they are doing it voluntarily. It's also fine and understandable if they are doing it at the urging of their wives to keep peace in the family.
An episode of Young Sheldon had the father, George, failing at an attempt to do a load of laundry. Later in the episode he slyly observed his wife at the washing machine. Punch line: A "Button you pull, that's stupid."
It's my understanding that in Japanese schools, the students are tasked with doing much of the daily clean up and coincidentally, the photo of the spotless locker room left by the Japanese soccer team is making the rounds on social media. Clearly some household chores are not unknown to Japanese men.
The life of Japanese salarymen is not enviable, so a division of labor may have made sense. As the article says, if the man isn't bringing in the money anymore, then that justification doesn't hold up.
I quite like this part.
"At housework school, old men meet other other old men:"
The loneliness that can come with old age is probably as real in Japan as anywhere else. This sounds like a fun and productive activity.
"I like the idea of taking distinct pride in doing the humble, simple, concrete things in life. "
Sounds a lot like, "God is in the details", and is an admirable way to present oneself.
My Dad, the B-17 driver, came home from work, loosened his tie, and read the paper in his easy chair until dinner was served. It was a different time. Not everything was bad. We never locked the door & left the key in the car. I played outside unsupervised until bedtime.
My Dad however, could do anything. He turned the carport into a den & wired it himself, and then built a stand-alone carport with a storage room.
My Mom cooked cleaned & took care of four children. She had bridge club once a week. they wore dresses & hats. There were thin mints & cocktail peanuts when she hosted.
In Jr High, the boys were required to take an entire year of shop classes, which included choices of wood, print, metal, ceramics, plastics, and drafting. Another class where the male teachers provided corporal punishment. The wood shop teacher had the best paddle, the print shop guy was the most feared.
Men, women, and our Posterity are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
As my divorce was working it's way through the biased court system, I learned how all manner of household tasks. Some I enjoyed. Cooking a turkey to perfection for my young children on Thanksgiving was particularly gratifying.
How do you say, "You did that wrong. Here, I'll fix it," in Japanese?
I'll do it wrong! I'll mess it up! I'll only make more work for her because she'll have to fix my mistakes and redo it!
There's also "YOU'll do it wrong! YOU'll mess it up! YOU'll only make more work for ME because I'll have to fix [the] mistakes and redo it!"
I like the idea of taking distinct pride in doing the humble, simple, concrete things in life.
I like the idea of it as well but I definitely struggle with putting it into practice. I try to bear in mind a quote attributed to St Theresa of Calcutta: “Wash the plate, not because it is dirty nor because you are told to wash it, but because you love the one who will use it next.”
When I was in high school …
Did you ride to school on the back of a dinosaur?
Both my sons — Millennials — had home ec in middle school, and were able to look after themselves while living on their own (the one began as a sophomore in college sharing an apartment off campus and the other not that long after graduation). My younger son went to a science and math magnet high school, and he laughs that he learned home ec in middle school, and laser optics in high school.
American men after the Boomer generation have increasingly given in the the financial rewards of specialization. Why do housework or cooking if you can earn many times the cost of paying someone to do it by charging a client another hour or earning a greater bonus? Interestingly, this financial logic seems to flip for the lower half of the middle class where the argument is to do it yourself to save money. On housework, this is where so many are supportive of open borders to keep landscaping, house cleaning, food pre-preparation, laundry, etc. cheap.
In the end, I see husbands and wives both struggling to find a more balanced life. But since government deficit spending gave rise to higher costs for everything in the !960’s the financial considerations seem to dominate the balancing. The culture has skewed Marxist with citizens being viewed as one-dimensional pieces of the global economic system.
Which begs the question: Who cleaned the Japanese World Cup soccer locker room?
Acting as though it's an elaborate skill that must be studied and learned is part of a system of division of labor and justifying not doing the work.
Weaponized incompetence. It can be a tool of manipulators.
Classes are good for the ones who actually do want to help. Because of the rigidity of roles, as much as a wife may want help, part of her may subconsciously resist having her husband do her "role" and she may not be the best teacher. She may be impatient or overly critical. (Because people are weird and complicated and often have conflicting emotions that are not at all logical.)
My first thought was that they could learn to do a lot of the tasks - cooking, ironing - by watching YouTube videos. My second thought was the realization that the social aspect was just as important. Men knowing there are other men who want to take up their share of the housework eases the social pressure against it and lets them make new friends.
This situation, in some way, must be new. Given enough time, it would have self-corrected.
I love that the men learn together and from each other.
My dad never entered the kitchen. For a while after my mom passed he would fry up a breakfast. However, because he never meal planned, he now has no sense of what a body needs. His diet is erratic. My uncle was the same after my aunt passed. It's an interesting science.
My mother was like you, Ann, having to take home economics and learn cooking in high school. She did all the cooking when we were growing up, and she was good at it (apart from the boiled vegetables), but it was always a chore. After he retired, my father took on the cooking and found that he really liked it, and my mother was thrilled to give it up. He died right before my second wedding, and his experience was kind of what inspired me to become the cook in my second marriage.
What Christopher B said. Sometimes it's not the husband who is unwilling to work. It's the wife who wants it done her way. Strict division of labor isn't necessarily dictated solely by the men who don't want to do housework.
I have friends like this. Teaching them to cook is like trying to make a cat swim. They can do it when you throw them in, but they'll never forgive you for it. Like the cat, they are above this. Fine, eat bad food or starve (not really). SMH.
"It's hard to be a man." - James Brown
Judging Japanese social customs through American eyes is disrespectful to Japanese culture. Before I lived there and knew many Japanese I did not understand Japan at all. After a couple of years immersed in their society I realized most of the unique Japanese social structure had a purpose. Take kitchen duties for example, Japanese kitchens were the size of a large closet and contained a bar-sized refrigerator without a freezer and cooking stoves were merely one or two burners. Ovens were rare. Consequently, Japanese shopped for food every day because there was little available raw food storage and little equipment to process it at home, hence it made a lot of sense for the one who does the shopping to also do the cooking. Moreover, Japan has many small shops or markets that focus on only a few commodities so that grocery shopping is done every day and usually more time consuming because stops at multiple stops are often required. Women, who were usually not employed outside the home did the shopping and cooking chores because men weren't available to do it, not because they didn't want to do it. In other words, the division of labor exists because it works for them, and has for a few thousand years.
Japan is not the US. A respected Japanese sensei once described Japan to me as a country with a first world economy, a second rate political system and a third world standard of living. That is somewhat of an exaggeration but mostly accurate.
My husband does MOST of the cooking. It is his stress reliever. I am a GREAT cook, but it is a chore for me. I clean up gladly!! It works for us.
Mary Beth, I agree wholeheartedly. It works both ways. I missed the social aspect of learning. That's important.
Critter said...
American men after the Boomer generation have increasingly given in the the financial rewards of specialization. Why do housework or cooking if you can earn many times the cost of paying someone to do it by charging a client another hour or earning a greater bonus? Interestingly, this financial logic seems to flip for the lower half of the middle class where the argument is to do it yourself to save money.
I think this is an ethos largely driven by being raised by parents and grandparents who lived through the privations of the Great Depression followed by extensive rationing during WWII. "Fix it up, wear it out, make do or do without". That was then followed by the raging inflation of the 1970s and 1980s when credit was tight and expensive. I'm not sure it's an economic class thing as much as generational.
“ Did you ride to school on the back of a dinosaur?”
I drove a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible. Seafoam green.
I never heard the slightest discord between my parents over who did what around the house or more generally about the division of labor within the family. There was never a word of criticism about the cooking or cleaning or failure to help with the cooking and cleaning.
I highly recommend Samurai Gourmet on Netflix, a TV show "a 12-part miniseries from Japan where a recently retired salaryman, the gentle 60-year-old protagonist, is troubled by his new free time. He decides to explore Tokyo on foot alone, eating something new every day. When he is challenged by a new experience, an imaginary wandering samurai appears – his idealised self – to show him the way. When he is too embarrassed to drink a beer with lunch, the samurai swaggers into the restaurant and demolishes a bottle of sake. Emboldened, Kasumi orders two beers."
It is a lovely series.
My grandmother would never let a man cook in her kitchen. No discussion. On the rare occasions that she was away from home for a few days without my Grandfather, she would make prepared meals for him. I think this situation was fairly normal until the early 70's.
My Dad never made more than a sandwich, or grilled burgers outside, until my mother had health issues and he started to cook to help out. He enjoyed doing it and continued to cook the rest of his life, including in other marriages.
I cook, she cleans up. Been working successfully for over 25 years of marriage.
But maybe the Japanese passion for perfection in little things discouraged the men from joining in the household chores. If wives are able to flawlessly execute the tea ceremony and other ritualized tasks, maybe husbands feel sheepish about joining in and spoiling things. I know. It's male privilege, complacency, and exploitation. But in so aesthetically aware a society, a lot of people may feel discouraged about attempting to do things that they can't do stylishly and well.
I'm curious why this is news in the Washington Post. But then I remembered the audience of the Washington Post: Rich Women.
When I first read this post, my bullshit detector went off. Likely based on the 5 or so Haruki Murakmi novels I’ve read. All of which involve the protagonist (always loosely based on Murakami himself) coming home tired late at night and chopping up cucumber and tomato and cooking something on the stove and having half a beer described with the utmost detail. So I figured Japanese men have this household stuff covered.
Only upon thinking about this over the course of the morning, I’m now realizing that maybe Murakami was trying to demonstrate how odd the main character was–and by extension, how odd he is–and this point was lost on me as an American reader.
I think it’s time for me to make it 6 or so Haruki Murakami novels so I can read one with this newfound perspective.
When I first read this post, my bullshit detector went off. Likely based on the 5 or so Haruki Murakmi novels I’ve read. All of which involve the protagonist (always loosely based on Murakami himself) coming home tired late at night and chopping up cucumber and tomato and cooking something on the stove and having half a beer described with the utmost detail. So I figured Japanese men have this household stuff covered.
Only upon thinking about this over the course of the morning, I’m now realizing that maybe Murakami was trying to demonstrate how odd the main character was–and by extension, how odd he is–and this point was lost on me as an American reader.
I think it’s time for me to make it 6 or so Haruki Murakami novels so I can read one with this newfound perspective.
I drove a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible. Seafoam green.
Close enough to a dinosaur.
"I drove a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible. Seafoam green."
The inlay on the side trim was white. Green and white vinyl seats, right? When you're young enough and that kind of kid, you remember these things. Nice. I walked (it was two blocks away) or rode in my friend's Karmann Ghia. Light green - 1962.
Covid got him in 2021. I have the tiny metal tag with that car's VIN hanging right next to me. He was a packrat, and I'm glad he was.
Don't tell anyone but American men make the best husbands.
Japanese women have an expression---"gokiburi teishu"---for a husband who's always underfoot and getting in the way in the kitchen.
It means "cockroach husband".
Well that 61 Chevy Impala convertible in seafoam green was close---but the ride from that year was the Impala 2 door hardtop (one of GM' "bubble top" designs) white with red upholstery. Maybe the best looking car Chevy ever built.
My wife (we've been married 57 years now) channels Ms. Althouse. I do a good bit of cooking and shopping---but I am not certified to operate the washing machine or load the dishwasher. Too complicated for a mere male to operate. OTOH I am allowed to run the clothes dryer. There are a nummber of other tasks around the house (including some traditionally male ones like painting) that have been ruled "off limits" to me. Couples work out their own domestic arrangements.
I read this post to my half Japanese partner. He got all riled up because these Japanese men would make Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645) roll over in his grave. Musashi preached "Know all things" and encouraged men to learn as much as they could. Also, not impressed with an architect that can't figure out how to cook or iron on his own.
Failure!
“ The inlay on the side trim was white. Green and white vinyl seats, right? ”
Yes.
It had been my father’s car. He loved having a convertible. Then he wanted a yellow car and they kept the old car for me to use because I was always doing things after school and couldn’t get home by bus.
Not even hibachi-conversant? Odd.
Another thought: these classes recreate the work environment, somewhat. Retired man gets together with his peers to solve problems and work on projects.
My father didn't live long enough to demonstrate any particular mechanical skills (that I recall) but my mother always said he taught her to cook. "I didn't know how to boil water," she said.
She was the youngest and prettiest of three daughters of the widow of a highschool principal, who had a B/black woman live-in cook and cleaner even in their modest house. Granny, her mother, apparently could kill, clean, and cook chickens from the back yard, but was not a notable cook and didn't much like kitchen work.
I don't know if my father learned his culinary skills from his mother (my Oma) or from the cooks and cleaners his parents employed to raise their two kids while they spent six days a week at the beauty shop. He grilled of course, but also could make a fine hearty breakfast.
Oma spent many Sundays preparing enormous lunches for family and friends; I'm not sure Opa ever lifted a hand but he was gone soon too.
TBC . . .
My mother became an OK cook once she learned how, and all four of us boys learned the rudiments of cooking and cleaning pretty early on. (Most of the ironing and heavy housework was done by our maid, who had worked for my Oma and Opa also; even a widow could afford help once a week, and Gussie was a friend too . . .)
My wife and I largely share the everyday cooking, and often piss one another off with different approaches and preferences. Her mother raised her to cook and clean for her dad and brothers and she thinks there's nothing she doesn't do better than I do, except the outside grilling.
I'm surprised about ironing though. That is a skill that everyone who has ever served in the military must know and be proficient in. That makes it by definition makes it a manly skill, or at the very least a neutral one.
I'm surprised about ironing though. That is a skill that everyone who has ever served in the military must know and be proficient in. That makes it by definition makes it a manly skill, or at the very least a neutral one.
I'm surprised about ironing though. That is a skill that everyone who has ever served in the military must know and be proficient in. That makes it by definition makes it a manly skill, or at the very least a neutral one.
But in so aesthetically aware a society, a lot of people may feel discouraged about attempting to do things that they can't do stylishly and well
I think that is a factor. The Japanese don't do things half ass. Thus the need to need to take a course to learn to cook simple things.
Learned helplessness is typically consensual.
I rode to junior high and high school in some friend's parents car, usually. It was 2 to 2.5 miles so walking wasn't much of an option. Walking home was the most common method; once in a while we rode our bikes to and from.
The one friend I had in highschool (grad '71) with his own car owned a red Impala, maybe a '63 or '64. My first car was a used Beetle bought in about '72. Until then I drove whatever old clunker my mother had at the time.
Who cooks and cleans for all the Japanese salarymen who cannot find a wife?
"It's hard to be a man." - James Brown
**********
An interesting coincidence: a very popular Japanese film series, running from the mid '60's all the way into the '90's, was titled, "Otoko wa, tsurai yo."
Which is a perfect translation of James Brown's observation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otoko_wa_Tsurai_yo
I can't comprehend men who would let themselves become this helpless. Sure they can take classes, but to let some idiot machismo cultural thing make you so dependent? I suppose it might just be me, but I saw men in the '70s, divorced and helpless after marriage. I vowed to know how to see after myself and cook myself good food. And it was reinforced by my time in service where if I wanted some home food, I had to cook it myself. Or if I wanted something I'd had living in one place, at another, I had to cook it myself.
But then, I was there in the first "Cooks" class that replaced the old Home Ec. In '76, some genius moved all the shop classes to the vocational school and set it up so that you couldn't take the college prep classes and spend have your day in vo-tech. I know I tried. It was a time of change. In '77, I did jrROTC the first year was voluntary for sophomore boys with the move away from the force labor army to volunteers.
Randomizer, many years ago I saw a film about a famous Taiko drum school in Japan. All the newcomers were tasked with, among other chores, wiping and polishing the floors every day. (Wax on, wax off)
Mary beth,
"Not the best teacher"
My father, a career test pilot, refused to be my flight instructor. He was an ultra-perfectionist, and was aware of how difficult that style would be for me.
My wife had the opposite experiences in cooking in her first marriage. Her mother never let her into the kitchen to learn to cook (same as with my mother). She got married right after college. Her first attempt at cooking for her new husband was pork chops. He very kindly told her that if they had eaten them, they might have died. Apparently with pork, you have to cook it long enough to get the blood out. After that, he did most of the cooking. Or just brought food home. He was a classically trained executive banquet chef at one of the bigger casino/hotels (MGM, then Caesars) in Las Vegas. So, he loved to cook, did it very well, and ran the buffet, so leftovers were plentiful. About the only things that he had to make himself, and couldn’t get from the buffet leftovers was potato salad without mayonnaise, which she is violently allergic to.
He died, leaving her with a couple of babies, and had to learn to cook on her own (moving away from Las Vegas at least partially to get away from her mother trying to raise her kids). She had watched him, as well as her French grandmother, carefully as they cooked, and found that she had a real talent for it, but not the physical ability to do much of it anymore (after her accident maybe 15 years ago). She still recounts the story of the one and only time I cooked for her in our early dating. I served her my storied cube steak and green beans, cooked (apparently to shoe leather for the cube steak) in the microwave. She, in turn, cooked me steak medallions, medium well (which is how both of us prefer our meat), along with uncut beans, with bacon and nuts, etc. Better than in most restaurants. Her real joy though was baking, because she could make beautiful things. During her second marriage, she had four hungry kids to feed, and they entertained a lot. She wowed their guests with her bakery concoctions. But she doesn’t like sweets, and I shouldn’t eat them for health reasons, so I have rarely seen her talents in that direction. Currently, we do take out about twice a week, and she uses her culinary skills to extend the dishes to 3-4 days. If she goes first, I expect that I will be back to my trademark microwave cooked cube steak and green beans - though I have moved up in my bean preferences.
I should add that I am not much better at cleaning as I am at cooking. She used to be compulsively meticulous at cleaning, going so far as banning (until this year) shoes in the house (she learned that, along with floral arrangement, from her Japanese Aunt). She can’t do the cleaning any more, and at least is considering now my insistent offer of bringing in a maid. She also can’t see the dirt anymore, that she used to.
Moreover, our house is cluttered. At a lunch after a funeral for a longtime friend recently, everyone else was talking about getting rid of all their excess stuff. I responded that it was easier to just buy a bigger house, and now build a 2,000 sq foot garage with 900 sq ft of storage. That should do us for awhile. I mentioned this to my Millennial daughter, who is into minimization. She already has, at my brother’s house, that he from our parents, all of my mother’s beautiful furniture, crystal, China, silver, etc, and she reacted in horror, knowing that she is most likely the one who will have to get rid of all of our stuff some day.
I had to petition my school board to be permitted to be the first girl to take shop classes. I wasn't a revolutionary: I just like building things, and I loved drafting, an increasingly lost art. My brothers and I were encouraged by a professional artist, an uncle employed in illustrative advertising, and also by our drafting teacher, and by an early IBM father with the tools of the trade, which were then algebraic and template-based.
A few years later, the school board decided to have both boys and girls take shorter versions of shop, drafting, sewing and home ec, then more time in whatever they preferred.
I think that's smart. I still I could sew. I can shingle a roof but not thread a spool.
Ann Althouse said..."When I was in high school, the girls were required to take an entire year of home economics! And we didn't even study cleaning."
When I was in middle school, each student, regardless of gender, was required to rotate through a series of language and practical skills classes. German, Spanish, French, Home Economics (cooking, sewing, etc), Typing, Drafting and Technical Drawing, Wood Shop, and Industrial Art (graphics, design). Home Economics was a lifeline for me. My dad was a laborer who worked 10+ hours a day, and my mom had serious mental health issues that meant that any housework that needed doing was done by the kids. Side note: I loved all of the practical skills classes and would have loved to continue taking them. Since I was a top student and eventual valedictorian, everyone from my guidance counselors to my teachers to my family told me that none of those classes were for me, as if those skills were somehow not worthy of embrace. I regret not having the courage to tell everyone around me to stuff it back then.
Randomizer said..."The loneliness that can come with old age is probably as real in Japan as anywhere else."
I recall a few articles over the years in places like the NYT that portrayed elderly loneliness as being exceptionally acute in Japan, particularly given the precipitous decline in birthrates (no children to care for older adults) and cultural restrictions (gender roles and other social norms).
"I drove a 1961 Chevy Impala convertible. Seafoam green."
That's totally awesome! My dad had a mid-1960s Impala, but I don't know the year. He always regretted getting rid of it. It was white and it wasn't a convertible, but as the family grew bigger, he had to buy bigger cars. In 1973, he bought a Ford Pinto station wagon. Then he bought a Volkswagon van. Then he bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird for himself.(Which was stolen and set on fire.) After all the kids left the house, he bought a small pickup truck and then he bought a Honda hybrid. His last automotive indulgence was that he bought a 1989 Mercedes 560SL convertible - like the one that Richard Gere drives in American Gigolo. (He always kept it locked up in the garage.)A few years ago he had to stop driving and he gave me the Mercedes. Then earlier this year he passed away. It was amazing how much he loved to drive. He used to drive for hours and hours; not really going anywhere, just to drive around for the sake of driving. I find that I usually use the Mercedes as my daily driver, now. For so many people, cars are such an important part of their lives.
The wife asks, "Why do I have to do all the housework if you are no longer bringing in the money?"
Because they are living off of the savings and investments and pensions or whatever that he earned over his working life and set aside for that purpose? Because that was the social contract of marriage that they both entered into?
This is why so many men either do not want to get married or will refuse to remarry. The shear dumb ingratitude.
What is a pairing knife?
I cook, she cleans up. Been working successfully for over 25 years of marriage.
Equal in rights, complementary in Nature/nature, reconcile. Of course, this is how we do it on Earth, which works for him, for her, and our Posterity, two, three, and sometimes more.
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