I have been living with a Japanese person for 7 years now. I knew nothing really about Japanese culture before then other than sushi, Pearl Harbor, A-bombs, hi-tech, geisha, and that the men were supposedly oppressors.

Over the past 7 years, though, I came to realize many more things. The Japanese psyche to be most definitely intriguing to me. Therefore, I have spent much time getting to know many Japanese men and women and observing their thinking and behavior and relationships, as I'm sure they might have been doing with me, too.

In the beginning, I did believe Japanese men to be chauvinistic. I thought they were the brutal dictators and their wives nothing more than mild and meek servants. I think we are led to believe that in the West. I believed that for a good while and I still believed that on into my marriage. As I spent more time around all the Japanese women I knew, though, I found out otherwise.

As some people might not know, it's traditional for the women to take care of the finances in Japan. The husbands give the money to the wives and the wives manage it and do with it what they see fit. The husbands are often known to ask permission to use their own money to buy something. My husband has a motorcycle and a truck and he asked my permission to buy both. I was shocked that he would even ask me. He told me that if he had been married to a "regular" Japanese girl, he would've never been able to buy either one. After all, they do have a saying in Japan about as long as the husband healthy and out making money, the women are satisfied.

I got really frustrated at my husband's behavior towards our relationship after our children were born. I am one who believes that the relationship of the husband and wife needs to be nursed in order for the children to thrive. I believe keeping an active sex life is important and I believe that time spent alone with your spouse and talking about things other than children is a necessity. He once told me that after kids, those kinds of things were no longer that important. I tried to blame this entirely on him, but I honestly believe that is the way they(both men and women) think things are supposed to be after marriage and kids. After years of being accustomed to a marriage being more like a business than companionship, they don't know any different.

As for sleeping arrangements, I agree wholeheartedly that it is an independence issue, as well as a privacy issue as far as Westerners are concerned. From the very start, I put all of my children in their own room even though I breastfed for the first few months. After growing up an only child, my children's independence was/is very important to me, and that was just one of the beginning steps for them gaining their independence.

I could go on about this...but now I have to make lunch. I'll be back...