This is the latest fun poll to analyze. As always, the majority of answers are applicable anywhere, but a few of them give us a little window on relationships in Japan…
9. 5 votes – Take out your school yearbook and old pictures
8. 6 votes – Prepare a toothbrush and other things she might need
8. 6 votes – Get ready to cook something manly
6. 12 votes – Have some comfortable clothes she can change into for lounging around
4. 17 votes – Get some DVDs you can enjoy together
4. 17 votes – Have some video games you can have fun playing together.
3. 19 votes – Make sure you have drinks and snacks
2. 46 votes – Prepare yourself to see her without make-up on
1. 59 votes – Clean your room
Any other advice out there?
I love number 8. What constitutes “something manly”? Hello beautiful. Here is some raw red meat from a cow I killed earlier. Bon appetite!
Number 2 should also read “…and prepare her to see you without makeup on”
Yeeah… I think manly cooking tends to be things like Niku-jaga (large cut potatoes with meat in that ubiquitous sweetened soy sauce type sauce), curry and rice (labor intensive, but convenient because you can prepare it in advance and people commonly say that it’s most delicious on the 3rd day after it’s made), and sukiyaki (but that’s more of a dad kind of thing).
As for number 2, that’s hilarious… I guess it goes both ways then.
I would add maybe that you should label your videos. I had some unlabeled video tapes of Kochi’s Yosakoi festival and one friend accused me of having videos of, um, other friends. It turned out OK though. We just watched those videos. Kochi’s Yosakoi is awesome.
Love #2: once sent a girl home who stayed late after a party with friends, who wanted to stay later: her eyebrows were penciled-in! No Heian fetish here.
Sent home another because she seemed uncomfortable. Whatever. Found out the next day from her friend she did not want to make bathroom noises. Oh for %^&*’s sake, Japan.
With all the girl power and fun out there, there’s also definitely some overblown self-consciousness and body-face-clothes-hair consciousness issues going on.
The obsession (both male and female) with shaving and shaping and redrawing eyebrows is a bit beyond me.