Quote:
Originally Posted by Wasabista
I think if we're talking about MARRIED or engaged couples, the numbers are indeed very low.
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Where do you get your statistics?
4.5% of marriages in Japan are between a Japanese and a non-Japanese (as of 2002) and that number is going up. There were 44,000 in 2006, and that's in Japan. That number is growing dramatically year by year. That's after a couple seconds research and doesn't touch the number outside of Japan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wasabista
Well, if I have this little survey right, I have Nyororin on the one hand saying I'm right about the sabetsu, but that single Western guys have it coming to them; and you on the other hand, that the sabetsu doesn't exist. I think you'll find that Japanese parents still resist the idea of a foreigner dating their daughter/son more than they would if the boy/girl were Japanese. In the United States, which is highly open to immigration, it's almost impossible to imagine how an analogous situation could occur.
Nonetheless, I hope you're right that my observations are out of date. I have to admit it has been 15 years since I had to rent an apartment in Japan, for example. I'll walk into a fudosan next time I'm in the country and see if they show me a list of apartments. I'll post the results here.
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I didn't say discrimination didn't exist, and if we are going to have a dialogue you can't put words in people's mouths.
Any Japanese parents surely have fantasies about who their son or daughter marries and I am not so blind to think that those fantasies probably don't include a foreigner. This is surely true of any country in the world, not just Japan. That being said, just because that is true doesn't mean parents can't or don't warm up to the idea.
I am not sure where you are from, but the USA isn't quite as open to immigration as you seem to think, and American parents surely have the same ideas about who their daughters and sons marry as Japanese parents.
When I was in Japan in March I was outside of a real estate agency looking at the layouts of apartments posted in the window (just to pass the time) and the agent came out to greet me...for what it's worth.