As a “single” trailing partner in Japan, I’m not granted the rights afforded to married trailing partners. Japan, like the US, does not nationally recognize gay unions, so if you’re like me, you’re shit out of luck.

If you are a straight trailing partner and in a relationship but not married you find yourself in a similar situation. I’ve met a few women in this predicament here in the land of loveless marriages. It’s not the kind of information they share with their married lady friends over lunch at The American Club. But I’m not a married lady friend and I’m much younger than the married ladies these “single” ladies lunch with. So after ten or fifteen minutes with me over coffee or a cocktail, I become Oprah and they become my guests.

The other day, a “single” lady friend of mine told me that she and her partner were not married and that she had been doing the visa run thing every 90 days or so. I know this run well. It involves long, lonely plane rides back home and the ability to earn shitloads of American Airline miles. God love ‘em.

A couple of months ago she tried to extend her visa another six months. So she enlisted the help of a Japanese acquaintance, had her make some calls and then visited the dreaded immigration center in Shinagawa.

It turns out that in order to even be considered for an extension, she and her partner had to provide mortgage information, life insurance documents, joint bank account statements and a declaration of love to one another on paper. And, I shit you not, a letter from her partner’s parents declaring their support of this unmarried union.

My advice? If you can get married, do. Why put up with all this BS? And if he doesn’t want to marry you, I say go on a visa run and never come back.

I’ve said this before but I watch a lot of stupid Japanese TV. One of my favorites is a show that’s a little bit like Iron Chef, but the cooking is done by four members of a not-so-young-anymore boyband. They have a celebrity guest each week, who orders whatever he or she wants. At the end, the guest determines the winner — if she’s a woman, she awards the winners with a kiss on their cheek, and if he’s a man, he brings gifts for the winners.

The show occasionally invites American celebrity guests, and I’ve seen ones with Cameron Diaz and Madonna. These are enlightening because they provide you with a glimpse of what these people are really like since the point of the show is to interact with them. It was fun, for example, to watch Cameron Diaz eat. I’ve never seen anyone enjoy eating so much. She ate everything with such obvious pleasure (In her words: “I love anything fried. Cardboard – if it was fried, I’d eat it”). Madonna, on the other hand, wouldn’t touch the tempura that they served because it was fried. Typical.

But the most interesting one yet was the one I just saw with Nicholas Cage. He covered his mouth with his hand while he ate, so no one could see him taking a bite. At first, I thought he was pretending to be like some Japanese women who do that. But then, he hid behind his jacket while he took a bite out of a pizza because it was too large and awkward to hide with his hand. After the Japanese production staff began laughing (you could hear them in the background), and the MC commented on it, he explained a little uncomfortably that he’s never eaten in public before. I presume he meant that he’s never eaten on television before, though that makes no sense because there must have been movie scenes in which he’s seen eating. Whatever he meant, one thing was clear. He looked incredibly ridiculous. Makes you wonder if he’s that self-conscious about everything.

When I first came to Japan three years ago, I made a huge effort to make sure that I fit into the Japanese culture and spoke Japanese properly, so I didn’t seem like one of those returnees with an accent and a complete disregard for Japanese manners. When I look back on it, I realize how exhausting those efforts were.

Now I’ve pretty much given up any pretense and effort to be more Japanese than I am. I’m in a new job, where the environment is 100% U.S.A., I hang out mostly with expat friends, and I include foreign words freely into my Japanese even when I’m not sure the word is understood. I even order my coffee in English in the coffee shop of my foreign-owned office building. In short, I live in an American bubble in Tokyo and much happier for it.

$39.99 is what one has to pay to try out the on-line dating for a month. I figured I have spent that amount or more on things that aren’t nearly as valuable as finding the love of your life (wrinkle cream, $80 hat, my frequent stops at Starbucks, etc.). I must say I will have to add listening to Dr. Phil and trying the on-line dating on my list of wasted forty dollars. 2 weeks of it and still getting creepy e-mails and random “winks” from people who obviously are incapable of reading (since they don’t fit my profile at all!). I finally got tired of waiting to find the right match so I did a search determined to at least “wink” at 3 guys. Didn’t ask for much…a guy that is taller than me (I’m 5′2″), a guy that makes at least as much as me (which really isn’t much), and a guy who has a bachelor’s degree. ABSOLUTELY NOBODY I would be interested in “winking” at. I guess I’m searching in the wrong pond. Anyhow, for those of you trying or thinking of trying the on-line dating here are some “note to self” tips:

1) Don’t post a picture taken from the web cam with the computer light gleaming on you. It will make you look like one of the pedophiles that get caught on 20/20.
2) Don’t post pictures where you obviously cut out your ex-girlfriend. Not very tasteful.
3) And don’t put “looking for 18 – (whatever age)” unless your 18 yourself. Creepy…

I teach elementary school children at an afterschool program. Half are full on Japanese and half are half and halfs–one parent local, one parent gaijin. But without any exceptions, they are all cuter than cute. We’re talking so cute you just want to rethink your whole attitude towards not having kids cute. But not really. Maybe. That’s why what I witnessed, yet again, this weekend really bothered me.

Cute gaijin kids traveling with their parents on the subway never get second looks from the locals. True, it’s rare that a cute local kid will raise an eyebrow. But there is one type of kid that I’ve noticed gets more looks and smiles than a shapely whore in pink heels. The French Kid.

Sure, the French Kid is a gaijin but remember that the Japanese worship all things French and that includes their fugly rodent spawn. I wasn’t surprised but I was angry when I saw no fewer than three Japanese adults smile and admire the ugliest little croissant I have ever seen. She had the forehead of that popular Mongolian sumo wrestler, the ears of a rat and the eyes of a nocturnal marsupial. But none of these horrible deformities stopped the offenders from smiling at her like demented clowns.

I want to see more locals smiling at their home-grown kiddies and even (am I asking too much?) at the half and halfs. Please?

So not that I don’t already have enough to do with my full time school counseling job, part time foster care social work, and fashion school classes, I also babysit occasionally. As I was in line with the zillion other cars waiting to drop off their children, I realized I would be that heartless parent who would rather have their child walk to school in this unsafe world than wait every morning for 30 to 45 minutes in line with all the loving parents. After safely dropping off the child and starting to accept that I shouldn’t reproduce, I saw a child heading towards school walking like Forest Gump. Her parent was making her walk to school with a full on leg brace! Now that’s tough love. So maybe I wouldn’t be the WORST parent after all

So my sister has asked me to write on her blog since she is busy with all the marvelous trips and of course work. I have to warn you that my writing is a bit EL (English Learner) but none the less, I thought I could add a bit of the west coast flavor to the site.

Living in Orange County, California, is quite interesting. I mean all the quality shows take place here. There’s Laguna Beach on MTV, The real housewives of Orange County, The OC, etc. etc. Well, as much as the show makes a mockery of us Orange County residents, I hate to admit that there is some truth to the materialistic, fake boobs, and “don’t talk to me unless you’re rich” attitude. Now trying to meet quality mates in this environment can be such a challenge. I went to the Landmark (a popular night spot in Corona del Mar) and a girl bumped into me with her fake boob which was so hard that I had to gasp for air. Of course following the girl were men gawking at her.

So I have decided to give an on-line dating site one month. Just to see if the on-line world is any better than these bar scenes. The fun part of it so far has been it’s just like on-line shopping. You click on a picture and you say “ooh that looks nice” and then click on additional pictures and say “ooh not so nice, nevermind.” Or you check off all the qualities that you are looking for in a mate and search for a match. So far I have had lots of Asian guys “wink” (on-line flirting) and creepy old men (no offense to anyone) but I will definitely keep you guys posted. This shall be an interesting ride. Is it like this every where? or are other states better at dating?