Bon Bon Boy and Hakoirimusume(daughter in a box)

There are some interesting words refers to rich boy and rich girl in Japan. Do you know the word ‘Bon Bon Boy’?? This word is not a positive expression. It means a boy who is rich and he think he can do anything by using his money (actually his father’s money),and even he pretend to know everything about society in fact he knows few things because he is born in a rich home and have no trouble to make a living. On the other hand, do you know Hakoirimusume?? This word has positive meaning toward a girl who is born in rich home. It means a girl who are grown up with careful parents, so she has few social experience because her parents tend to protect her from dangerous things (sometimes it’s too much and usually she cannot do nothing which has a little risk such as part-time jobs or traveling abroad.) These two words towards a boy and a girl refers to similar situation such as born in rich home and have few social experience but if it’s a boy, that mean negative image, and if it’s a girl, it has positive image. It’s very interesting, but nobody knows why people have such an image, thank you for reading!!

Marriage in Japan

What is your image of marriage?? I will write you typical Japanese image of marriage first, and then write about the image of marriage nowadays. Not so long ago, the ideal age to get married is from early 20s to 30s, and after getting married, women usually quite their jobs and stay at home to do housework and raise children, and men continue to work until their 60s to earn money to manage his children to go to school. So especially for women, marriage is very important for their life, however, the typical image is not correct to describe marriages nowadays. One thing we should focus on is that increasing of women who have their career. Many women tend to continue working after marriage, and some of them even don’t have their children. There are some reason, women who don’t have children think that they want to live freely with their partner rather than devoting themselves to raise children, and also want to continue to enjoy their life with rich and luxury finance condition. In my case, my mother quitted her job when she got married. It was 20 years ago, so it’s natural to quite her job for women who got married, however she told to me that you need not to quite your job after marriage or even not to get married is ok and continue to do something you want to do. I think my mother was happy to make family but also she scarified herself sometimes, that’s why she told to me such a thing. I have not decided to got married or not, and quite my job after getting married, or not. I will do my best to make our life happy, how about you??

Family relationship in Japan

Japanese typical family is formed by mother who don’t have her job to stay home and make effort to keep house clean, cooking nice food to keep family healthy, control family member’s finance, and father who is hardworking to earn enough money for his family, and he doesn’t do housework at home, usually father has strong power to control their children or family finance. In American movie, family members say ‘thank you’ or ‘I love you’ to each other, but in Japan, they don’t say such words to their family. They thank to their family very much really, but they tend to hide their feelings. But on special day, such as mother’s day, or father’s day, they show their appreciation and say ‘thank you’ from their heart. It is very moving because we don’t show our feeling usually. Most of Japanese children start to live alone when they enter a university. They lend an apartment room by themselves. Room share is rare in Japan, and the parents usually give them money to manage the tuition and living finance. Maybe, it’s different from American students; most of Japanese universities’ students are depend on their parents in terms of finance. I wrote about my family relationship, and I think it’s somewhat different from typical Japanese family, and the image of typical family is now changing because the increase of women who works out of their home, so there are many families which both father and mother is working. In this case grandma or grandpa takes care of their children. My mother stayed home always but I had many friends who cannot see their mother only short time in evening. I don’t know which better family is; however I’m happy to be born as my family member. haha, thank you for reading.

Dating in Japan

When I was a high school student, there were many couples in school. We can divide them into mainly two groups. One group doesn’t hesitate to be looked as a couple. They stay as themselves even in classes, for example, they have lunch in classroom with only themselves (Japanese high school students have lunch in their own classroom usually so they can be looked to be a couple) or study in library, or go home after school, or come to school in the morning. They don’t hesitate to show that they are a couple. On the other hand, there was another group who hesitate to stay as a couple in schools. They are a bit shy and tend to hide their relationship because high school students likes rumor about couples. They avoid staying themselves in school time and after school they go first food shop or go shopping. On weekend, most couples go out. In Japan, most high school students don’t have cars, so typical dating style is going shopping near their hometown and watching movies, having lunch, or going amusement park, museum, aqua museum..etc… They are likely to spent time to chat to know each other more deeply; most couples know each other’s problems more, than their friends. I don’t know what is the typical dating in Japan, at least in my high school, there were two types and both of them like to go shopping and spend time to talk about their relationship and nothing special.

My experience in China

I traveled china this summer. It was not just a trip, I joined a volunteer work camp. Do you know Hansen’ disease? It is a illness which make people’s hand or legs paralyzed, and 10 years ago or even now people who got this illness are discriminated by society even their family are rejecting to admit them as their member, so some years ago, the government made a low to avoid the expand of Hansen’ disease and forced them to live one or two place. In Japan, that place has enough facilities to live, but in China, the villages don’t have enough electricity or water supply system. We visited a village which people who had got Hansen’ disease(now they recovered totally) and made water supply pipe or some tanks with Chinese people, they can speak English also, so I practiced my English skills, we enjoyed to stay that village for 10 days. We sang songs, drunk beer all night, and danced!! It was fantastic experience!! If you are interested in this activity, please comment!! If you not, please comment!!

Japanese high school groups

Let me introduce Japanese high school life, especially, I will focus on some groups of high school students. I have read a part of “Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids”. That book said that in American high school, there are many kinds of groups. Some people who don’t like school make a groups by themselves and the others who love cartoons make a group by themselves and their fashion are actually different from the others..etc...
I will tell you how was my high school was. My high school had some groups also, some people who likes studies accompanied with themselves but the groups doesn’t have their names just like American one, and the groups didn’t have conflict each other, I guess that students made their groups because they just feel comfortable to be with people who have same hobbies and similar interest. In Japan, we now studying American high school life, and this (writing about Japanese high school life and ask questions to you!!)is the homework, so please comment!! See you!!

Self introduction to everybody

The self introduction
Hello!! This is Hio. My family name is Hioki and my first name is Megumi, so my friends call me Hio, as a short form of family name. I changed a little my nickname in English, then, Honey is nice to put the name of my blog. I’m 2nd grade in Waseda University. I’m 19years old and my major is English. My hobbies are listening music and radio. I like Japanese J-pop music. Also I’m interested in volunteer work, this summer; I joined a volunteer work in China. We visited a village which are located countryside, and talk with villagers, if you have interest about volunteer, please comment!! If you don’t have interests, please comment and tell me your school life!!
日本に来たことはありますか？日本は美しい景色のあるところや騒がしい都市、自然の多いところやビジネスで発展した都市など、さまざまな場所があります。もし日本で興味のある場所があれば言ってください。