LJ_Reloaded
バクスター の
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2010
- Posts
- 21,217
This would of course be called RAPE CULTURE if a man said it.
http://www.vagabondish.com/female-foreign-japan/
“We usually have a tough time keeping female teachers here,” my boss informed me on my first day of work as an English teacher in Tokyo. “They usually don’t last more than six months.” I looked up from studying the roster list of teachers (30 — all male), in surprise.
“You mean at this school?”
“No, I mean … in Japan.” He shrugged. “Tokyo’s a tough city to be single … If you’re, you know … a western woman.”
I stole a quick glance at the photos that were mounted on the wall behind him. Four middle-aged White Dudes. All of them were bearded and balding. All of them resembled the aging, stringy-haired members of the band Metallica. And all of them were pressed up against the model-thin bodies of a heavily made-up Japanese Beauty Queen.
I don’t think I’ll have a problem, I thought.
It wasn’t that I was beauty queen gorgeous. Far from it. Slim, medium-height, with hazel eyes and freckles, I was at best ‘cute’ and at worst, average. But I had something that the competition didn’t: long, naturally curly, blond hair. Furthermore, I was bilingual, well-traveled and college-educated.
But as I realized a few weeks into my stay in Japan, I was also mysteriously, frustratingly invisible.
Cute baristas at Starbucks wouldn’t look at me, business men on bicycles ran over me and college students hurriedly backed away from me with mumbled apologies whenever I tried to strike up a conversation about the weather or ask for directions. They wouldn’t even give me the time of day. Literally.
“You’ve got to be assertive,” my Japanese girlfriends advised. “Japanese guys are shy so you have to make the first move.” So I smiled invitingly at men in bars and on busses. I asked for help reading restaurant menus and subway signs.
“Do you have any book / drink reccomendatioins?” was my usual line as I stood near them in bookstores or sat next to them on barstools. But the ‘come hither’ stare or conversation starter doesn’t work if the other person refuses to look at you. If they met my gaze at me at all, it was just to shoot me this panicked look, like I’d just asked them to father my unborn children. My boss had been right. It was hard to be a single, western woman in Japan. But why?
http://www.vagabondish.com/female-foreign-japan/
“We usually have a tough time keeping female teachers here,” my boss informed me on my first day of work as an English teacher in Tokyo. “They usually don’t last more than six months.” I looked up from studying the roster list of teachers (30 — all male), in surprise.
“You mean at this school?”
“No, I mean … in Japan.” He shrugged. “Tokyo’s a tough city to be single … If you’re, you know … a western woman.”
I stole a quick glance at the photos that were mounted on the wall behind him. Four middle-aged White Dudes. All of them were bearded and balding. All of them resembled the aging, stringy-haired members of the band Metallica. And all of them were pressed up against the model-thin bodies of a heavily made-up Japanese Beauty Queen.
I don’t think I’ll have a problem, I thought.
It wasn’t that I was beauty queen gorgeous. Far from it. Slim, medium-height, with hazel eyes and freckles, I was at best ‘cute’ and at worst, average. But I had something that the competition didn’t: long, naturally curly, blond hair. Furthermore, I was bilingual, well-traveled and college-educated.
But as I realized a few weeks into my stay in Japan, I was also mysteriously, frustratingly invisible.
Cute baristas at Starbucks wouldn’t look at me, business men on bicycles ran over me and college students hurriedly backed away from me with mumbled apologies whenever I tried to strike up a conversation about the weather or ask for directions. They wouldn’t even give me the time of day. Literally.
“You’ve got to be assertive,” my Japanese girlfriends advised. “Japanese guys are shy so you have to make the first move.” So I smiled invitingly at men in bars and on busses. I asked for help reading restaurant menus and subway signs.
“Do you have any book / drink reccomendatioins?” was my usual line as I stood near them in bookstores or sat next to them on barstools. But the ‘come hither’ stare or conversation starter doesn’t work if the other person refuses to look at you. If they met my gaze at me at all, it was just to shoot me this panicked look, like I’d just asked them to father my unborn children. My boss had been right. It was hard to be a single, western woman in Japan. But why?
