Thursday, December 14, 2006

What men and women are seeking in each other

I was talking to a few women in the ESL yesterday, and they were sharing some information that they had gathered over the past days and weeks. According to them, Japanese men seek women who posses the "4 Ka's." They are kawaii (cute), kashikoi(intelligent), kateiteki(concerned about their family), and karui (means light, but refers to the woman's weight).

Next they said that traditionally, women have been interested in men that posses the "3 Ko's." Ko in this case means high. They are high in stature, or tall, highly educated, and highly salaried. One woman also mentioned that they had heard that a match-making company that arranges meetings between men and women based on data collected in questionnaires pronounced that 80% of the women who submitted questionnaires sought men who were earning over ¥8,000,000 year. That would be someone who earns roughly six figures in US dollars. She said that only 19% of working men earn that much money annually, and if you think about it a little bit, those men are probably well over 40 years of age.

Their conclusion was that Japanese women, for the most part, want to be taken care of, and that Japanese men want to take care of some one, but both sides are relatively unrealistic. Women are looking for men that are unavailable or who don't exist, and men are looking for a little sister to take care of, not a partner.

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