I remember observing early on in my teens while growing up in Japan and the best Japanese-American marriages seemed to be those in which the men were American and the women Japanese. If the man was Japanese and the woman was American, the difficulties were nearly insurmountable. The woman would be accustomed to an American culture in which young husbands helped their wives with things like the dishes, laundary, and diapers; while the man would be accustomed to a Japanese culture in which husbands never traditionally did anything of the sort. In fact, in Japan, the husband traditionally walks ahead of his wife, and the wife stands and lets her husband sit if there is only one open seat on a bus or subway.
If the man was American, however, and the woman was Japanese, the shoe would be on the other foot. Japanese women would feel pampered having a husband who volunteered to do the dishes or take out the garbage; and American men would feel spoiled having a wife who expected to wait on her husband hand and foot.
This, however, goes entirely over the top: this CNN video clip shows a cafe for Japanese women sick and tired of being ignored by Japanese men, women who turn to American men to wait upon them for a chance to feel like a queen for a day: Have a look.
[Hat tip to C.B.]
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