J-Girls

J-Girls

MGs came to Nagoya. This week, a group of 16 Japanese girls from a woman’s college in Sendai flew to Nanzan to come hang out with us. They call themselves MGs (I am not sure what the acronym really stands for, but it surely makes me thing of a car company). They came under the premise to help us with our class projects. But since our class project is a joke (“find a place in Nagoya and talk about it”) and since these girls had to pay a significant amount of money to fly all the way from Sendai, I have been puzzled as to what the real motives behind the MGs’s visit are. Japanese people are very nice, for sure. But no one is let’s-spend-$1000-hanging-out-with-gaijins nice. Today, however, I finally understood what brought the MGs all the way to Nagoya…

For our class project we were divided into eight groups, each receiving two MGs as our peer advisors. Due to a lack of boys in my class, several groups were exclusively female. I noticed a strange aura of disappointment among the MGs who ended up in all-girls groups. There was something very tragic in their facial expressions. It reminded me of the time when I bought a very expensive laptop only to find out that the “L” key was missing. Not a worthwhile investment… Furthermore, I was a bit surprised by the fact that the MGs seemed to enjoy taking pictures of me. Snap, snap, snap. After each shot, they exclaimed collectively: Kawaiiii! I got really proud of my “cuteness” but then I noticed that they were, in fact, taking pictures of every male in our class. Hmm…. Today, during our presentation, I had a really hard time focusing – a group of MGs sitting in the first row starred at me with an odd, dreamy expression.

The puzzle seems complicated, doesn’t it? Well, not until you plug in the last piece. Everything becomes sparkling clear. Seeing the MGs in action served as this very last piece of the J-Girl puzzle. I entered the dining hall only to find my dear Sendai friends to be laughing in the most effortful way at a table of random white boys. The boys had no connection to either our class or project. Their Japanese was terrible. And so was the MGs’ English. But somehow the communication seemed smooth. The puzzle was complete. The MGs were on a manhunt.

Whether I ( and the other white boys) were cute or not was of no significance. What mattered the most were our marriage-properties. I understand that the above statement might potentially be very offensive but bear with me. Here are four reasons why a non-Japanese man is of high interest to the J-Girls.

a. Most Japanese guys consider girls marriageable until a certain age.

b. Japanese guys just don’t seem that interested, to be a single man is ok. To be a single woman is not.

c. It’s very hard to have a career as a woman in Japan, the wage is bellow 50%, companies are not willing to invest into female employees because they know they’ll leave sooner or later; till 1969 a woman had to leave work after she got married. Legally obliged, to be precise. So if a girl wants to improve her life-prospects, the only thing she can do is to improve marriage prospects. Becoming a housewife is the ultimate goal – and in fact 60 % do.

d. Japanese guys suck. They have too much choice so they don’t put in any effort; plus they know that the girls are desperate. When they eventually marry they never come home before 11 PM; on the weekends they play golf with their clients. And this is not just a bunch of stereotypes. Ask anyone who ever did homestay in Japan, how often did they see the dad?

Alright. So a Japanese girl needs to marry quick, and Japanese guys suck. What does she do? She goes West (in direction of Nagoya). She tries to break the vicious cycle of getting more desperate as her marriage-ability decreases. A non-Japanese man presents an immediate solution – he grew up with mommy and daddy sharing equal roles; he does not expect her to stay at home; he actually likes playing with kids; and the only time he’d consider overtime is when he gets his hourly rate times two. He’d rather gossip with his wife than go drinking with his colleagues every day. He cares. He’s not a bigot. He’s perfect. And so westward J-Girls go.

And so, all of sudden, I’m being taken pictures of, I’m being admired even on my bad days. I’m being pushed into the role of the perfect prince charming who’s going to save the MGs from a desperate housewife’s destiny. Plus, I go to Yale….

Wait. I’m being stared at by a random woman from across the Starbuck’s. Wait. She’s fixing her hair, standing up, walking in my direction. She puts on the so-effortful-so-well-known smile. She starts talking to me. “Sumimasen. Excuse me. But where are you from? America? No? Europe? That’s ok too! Do you wanna get coffee together?! Let’s go!”

Little does she know that I just want to talk.