Foreign Wives Again!

In spite of my aversion to the way foreginers are portrayed on TV here, I can't stop watching "My Wife is a Foreigner." Last night's show featured Seema, from India, and the Russian Olga.

Seema struck me as a very smart and capable woman. She's starting her own business and she prepares an ambitious Indian breakfast every morning. But of course, the poor husband has to hop across the street to his mother for Japanese lunch, and the inlaws were going on about cultural differences. The most irritating part, though, was when the couple were in the studio with the Japanese "talents." One, a rather abrasive Japanese woman, told Seema that in Japan it's wrong to criticize your husband in from of your mother-in-law, or something like that. C'mon! These people have been married for eighteen years!　I've had similar experiences, people trying to tell me about my Japanese husband when they've never met him, as if all Japanese husbands are alike and I can't possibly understand Japanese culture on my own.

I didn't have any issues with the Olga segment, though I did wonder about the live-in mother-in-law. But Olga seemed really sweet and cheerful, so maybe she's cool with the arrangement.

Last week there was a perpetually cheerful American wife who got all teary when thinking about her inlaws and told them, on national TV, that she hopes they will live together again one day. Puh-lease! She just makes the rest of us look bad!