This blog has no title because Joanna refused a good title for it

Hello Everyone!

This blog is to tell you about some unfortunate stories I've come across about women here.

The first tale is about a woman I met during an FTL at Umeda (a major part of Osaka). She started off the lesson quite fine. We were having some good conversation and what not; then I asked her how she's been recently and she figured that knowing me for five minutes meant she could tell me her life story... WOW! For the past ten years, she's been (fairly) confined to her house--not travelling anywhere, not going too far away and not doing too much. You must be thinking "Wow, what a husband she must have," but unfortunately you're wrong. She had two cats... CATS! But about a year ago, the first one passed away, after being chronically ill and her desperate attempts to keep it living. She was pretty broken up about the first death, but quite recently (about two months ago), her second, and of course, favourite cat died. To tell the truth, after what she was telling me, I'm surprised she didn't try to bring it back to life in some weird underground biology experiment... It had strokes, illnesses, broken limbs and all the fun stuff, but has miraculously kept on ticking (with her help). Before it died, she had to give it daily injections, feed it special food and CONSTANTLY care for it... This woman is pure commitment. The good side of the story is that she's going on a vacation with her husband! Yay!

The second story is worse. I met a woman recently at a school about an hour away in Wakayama, doing an FTL (of course). She was telling me the same kind of thing--about how she doesn't go on many holidays or trips anymore because she has a dog, which we talked about for a bit. Then we started talking about holidays. In Japan, there's Valentine's Day, where women give men gifts and a month later, White Day, where men give women gifts. She went on to tell me that she gets her husband chocolate every year, but he gives her nothing... so, I awkwardly changed the subject to birthdays. She told me that every year she gets her husband something nice and I asked her what she would like to get for a gift on her birthday and she replied, "A cake." She continued to tell me that every year, her husband forgets her birthday... every year! But here's the kicker--their dog gets cake on his birthday... She laughed it off and I realized that the lesson was over and I had less awkward and happier places to be. Poor lady.

Tonight, Jo and I decided to go for a bike ride after I got home from work for some fresh air and exercise. It was pretty late out--10:30ish. After about 15 minutes, we decided to go through some back streets and stumbled on what we later found out to be Osaka's largest Red Light District, also known as Tobita. We, of course, investigated. The first street we went down had older ladies sitting on chairs with another older lady behind them on a sexy-looking mattress. We went down a few more streets and (luckily for the horny men of Osaka) saw a lot more variety. There was quite an array of women, some looking like they were in their 20s, 30s and (sadly) late teens. Lots of costumes too. While biking through the area, we came across a fairly busy part, where a group of 20-something men told us "Merry Christmas," which was nice of them. Haha. There was also a bunch of salarymen wandering through the streets (except for the first one, which was empty).

After we got home, we did some research and found out that the old woman sitting in the chair in every shop is called the "mamasan," who is pretty much the pimp. You bargain with her for the service and she makes the ultimate decision and sometimes refuses business.
Even though prostitution is technically illegal here, with the shabby force they call police in Japan and many loopholes, nothing is done and it continues to thrive. The industry has expanded so much that there are apparently many non-Japanese prostitutues employed in Japan.

And, to finish this lovely blog, I had a man tell me today that he wished he could divorce his wife, become Muslim and marry four women... he was a Buddhist priest. Sometimes I feel more like a marriage counselor than an English teacher.

Cheers,
Scott & Jo