5.5 at 7:10 and kiddie abduction

Today I got a nice little awakening, Japanese style: a 5.5 at 7:10! Nothing like a little shake up in the morning to get the day going... EXCEPT IT'S SUNDAY!

Ah well :)

I've been a teeny weenie LOADS of busy, hence the lack of activity on here. But alas, I am back, for now anyway. Today I thought I'd bring you some "legally social" insight into Japan.

Marriage. Yes, even the highly evolved Japanese people have it.

But I'm not here to talk about marriage, I'm here to talk about D-I-Vorce. The thing that some marriages lead to. While Japan has enjoyed a very low divorce rate for the last decades, the level has been steadily rising. While this wouldn't be something I worry about, it proves a difficult issue when it comes to dividing the ex-couple's most valuable asset: children.

Most of us outsiders have a clear concept of sharing and/or custody, for the Japanese it is not so simple, I will quote something I got off the BBC NEWS website:

Osamu, who doesn't want to use his full name, got divorced five years ago and his daughters are now 17 and 14. He sees the younger girl once every two months, the older girl about twice a year.

"I thought about their best interests," he says. "So I gave in and let their mother have custody."

Osamu says that at the time of the divorce he thought of splitting up his daughters, with the parents having custody of one each. But he decided it would not be good for them.

"In Japan traditionally men go out to work and women look after children. We tend to think women will be better off taking care of them, especially when they are small.

"Of course, there are exceptions. Maybe the father's family has a business and needs the next generation to take over."

Osamu added that men tend to think they can go on, get married again and start a new family more easily than women. From his experience it's usual for fathers not to see children at all. (My highlighting)

So, that's basically how it is in Japan. I've always found the expectations of private life to be the most difficult point of Japanese culture to understand...
Well this really wouldn't be such a problem, as most Japanese men and women accept that this is the way it has been and will always be, that if a marriage falls apart, the father is expected to piss off and reset his life and the mother must be, well you know, a mother.

In fact:

• The number of marrying foreign is higher than the number of marrying foreign

• It is rare for a marrying to marry a Western , but marry Western.

• A marrying marrying a foreigner is most likely to marry a from , the or , in that order.

• A marrying a foreigner is most likely to marry a from , the or

The problem is that many Japanese marry foreigners, who often have a different idea of how things are going to pan out. That and many people choose to escape to Japan, because it's kinda like Brazil for Portuguese who are looking to avoid jail time: all you need to do is get inside the country and you can forget all court orders issued in other countries.
This is because Japan is the only modern country that has not ratified the Hague convention (you know, the part where you cannot abduct your kids). So why is this a problem? Well, it becomes a problem when your husband/wife runs off with your kids and you can do nothing about it, even if you have full custody.

But alas! It seems that Japan will soon accept the "new order" and sign up! This will mean thousands of parents will soon be able to see the kids someone tried to make them forget they had! I can only imagine scenes of family reunion sounding something like this:
- "Who's your daddy?"
- "知らない。。。"

Perhaps this in the future will lower the number of parents who cannot access their children or who won't divorce in fear of losing them.