"My Darling F'd Gaijin" -- a how-to book

[Taro Toporific]

"My Darling Foreigner" by Saori Oguri tells all in Japanese about how wonderful we are and using manga illustrations to explain as it says on the subtitle of the cover, "What would it be like if you married a foreigner?"

[amdg]

At the foot of the cover - "My darling is ambidextrous"





W.T.F. ???

[Crambo]

Her darling is also incredibly hairy

[Marvin Feltcher]

The darling she refers to is a guy called Tony Lazlo. He's an incredibly talented and, from what I know of him, extraordinarily nice guy.
He's a hack who seems to do most of his work in Japanese, publishing quite a bit in the Japanese media.
He's also one of the biggest, if not the biggest, advocates of a multicultural Japan where FG are treated as first class citizens.
Unlike some others working toward the same goal (they shall remain unnamed), Tony goes about his business quietly and achieves remarkable results.
Having said that, I thought the book was tripe. Naturally, it's a best seller!!

[Captain Japan]

"My Darling Foreigner" by Saori Oguri tells all in Japanese about how wonderful we are and using manga illustrations to explain as it says on the subtitle of the cover, "What would it be like if you married a foreigner?"

The Asahi ran a story on this a few months ago:

WEEKEND BEAT/INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS:`Darling' foreigners usually just regular guys

Oguri also takes jabs at Laszlo's foreign friends, who enjoy something approaching celebrity status among Japanese women for their blond hair and fluent English.

``You just know that they would not be popular at all in their own country,'' she said.

``Everyone likes Tony. When we are out, even if I am standing right there-obviously the wife and the author of the book-people don't ask me for my autograph but for Tony's,'' she said. ``Even my editors are more eager to meet the darling than me.''

Seems like a lot of the same tired content but I haven't actually picked up a copy. The first time I saw this was when a short cartoon appeared in the freebie job recruit publication R25.

[Ol Dirty Gaijin]

I've seen bits of these book. They print bits of it in the Vodaphone booklet that gets sent with your bill every month.

[same]

My girlfriend's got a copy

[gkanai]

The darling she refers to is a guy called Tony Lazlo. He's an incredibly talented and, from what I know of him, extraordinarily nice guy.
He's a hack [JOURNALIST] who seems to do most of his work in Japanese, publishing quite a bit in the Japanese media.
He's also one of the biggest, if not the biggest, advocates of a multicultural Japan where FG are treated as first class citizens.

Amen! I like Tony a lot as an activist and as a person.

He's doing great stuff at Issho.org

http://www.issho.org/index.php

[AssKissinger]

My wife read that just a few weeks ago. Is there gonna be an English version?

[gkanai]

Is there gonna be an English version?

The article says that Tony's working on an English version of the first book.

[kotatsuneko]

good link G, cheers

[Neo-Rio]

Looking at some of the comments left in amazon.co.jp's listing for this book, most of the lady readers have now fallen in love with Tony.

This book may as well be titled "Why Tony is such a big stud and you should want him!"

[amdg]

[Captain Japan]

At the foot of the cover - "My darling is ambidextrous"
W.T.F. ???

This article has no mention of anyone being ambidextrous...
Examining the exotic ins and outs of marrying a foreigner
Japan Times

Elsewhere in the world, mixed marriages are no big deal. In Japan, however, the kokusai kekkon (international marriage) is still an issue tinged with exoticism and other-worldliness. Witness the enormous success of manga series "Daalin wa Gaikokujin" (My Darling is a Foreigner), and you'll see the point.

The author, a woman who professes she had never thought she would marry a non-Japanese, fell in love with, and subsequently married, an American. The subsequent karuchaa shokku (culture shock) prompted her to create the books based on the couple's daily life. For her, little details of her husband's behavior assumed enormous significance, and the difference in how he viewed life in general and Japanese life in particular was one me kara uroko (scales dropping from one's eyes) event after another.

But, at the same time, the sheer joy and discovery that's a big part of kokusai kekkon comes to the fore, and the manga is being hailed in jyoseishi (women's magazines) as both a heart-warming love story and a kind of instructional manual for those preparing to take the kokusai kekkon plunge themselves.

Some of the magazines have taken the subject a step further and include real how-to manyuaru (manuals) with such titles as: "Gaijin Daalin wo Getto Suru Killaa Item (Killer Items That Will Get a Gaijin Darling)" and "Gaijin to no Renai wo Kekkon ni Musubitsukeruniwa (How to Convert a Gaijin Love Affair into Marriage)." Most of these instruct women to combine the traditional yamatonadeshiko (stereotypically demure Japanese woman) with gendaiteki tsuyosa (modern-day strength). For example, a gaijin hunter should carry a hand-ironed handkerchief at all times, but she should also be able to voice her opinion on current affairs, preferably in English. (Oddly, there's no mention that in order to do so, she should subscribe to this paper)....the rest...

[Samurai_Jerk]

There's one of those shows on TV Tokyo now that highlites the happy marriage of a Japanese woman who's married to an Italian Chef. One segment was titled 家庭でも作れる本格イタリア料理 (He can even make real Italian food at home). Amazing. She's married to an Italian Chef who works in a high class Italian restaurant and he can cook! Will wonders never cease? Why do all of these shows focus on the gaijin spouses' cooking ability? At least it wasn't the wife making a honkaku foreign breakfast this time.

[ttjereth]

Never caught this thread the first time around but my wife has 3 or 4 of the books by this couple, and it's really not that bad.

It has some dumb overgeneralizations and such, but there's nothing particularly malicious, and honestly I even found the first two of them amusing enough to read through in Japanese, and some of the stuff is fairly spot on. They're supposed to be comedic though, the wife is a professional manga artist/author and she writes the books to be funny, so in some places there is obviously going to be some comedic license taken.

The husband seems like a nice enough/intelligent enough guy but the book he wrote (the third one I think) and the bits he wrote in the others were horrendously boring.

[Adhesive]

I think I'll pick this up for a laugh. It doesn't really bother me that most of the humor probably stems from simple cultural ignorance because, sadly, the book is just reflecting what 99% of the Japanese people actually believe. I mean, I know it shouldn't be surprising that an Italian chef cooks Italian meals at home, but it is for most Japanese girls, and that's what makes the book so unintentionally funny. I've known a lot of male okonomiyaki, ramen, and sushi chefs over the years, and I've never once seen them in the kitchen at home whipping up an entire meal for the lady. Obviously there are exceptions, but apparently not enough to diminish any of the surprise J-girls experience when getting with a gaijin who's skilled in the domestic arts.

[TennoChinko]

Some information on Tony Lazlo turned up on Debito's site:


http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=566


Could not be bothered to click the links, but get the strong feeling they don't like each other much.

[ttjereth]

I think I'll pick this up for a laugh. It doesn't really bother me that most of the humor probably stems from simple cultural ignorance because, sadly, the book is just reflecting what 99% of the Japanese people actually believe. I mean, I know it shouldn't be surprising that an Italian chef cooks Italian meals at home, but it is for most Japanese girls, and that's what makes the book so unintentionally funny. I've known a lot of male okonomiyaki, ramen, and sushi chefs over the years, and I've never once seen them in the kitchen at home whipping up an entire meal for the lady. Obviously there are exceptions, but apparently not enough to diminish any of the surprise J-girls experience when getting with a gaijin who's skilled in the domestic arts.

It's really not that bad. I could scan a couple of pages if you want a preview.

[ttjereth]

Some information on Tony Lazlo turned up on Debito's site:


http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=566


Could not be bothered to click the links, but get the strong feeling they don't like each other much.

Good god, that would just be the wussiest fight ever

[sublight]

Some information on Tony Lazlo turned up on Debito's site:


http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=566


Could not be bothered to click the links, but get the strong feeling they don't like each other much.

Wow, what a pissy article. My opinion of Lazlo just went up.

[Adhesive]

It's really not that bad. I could scan a couple of pages if you want a preview.

Awesome. If you get a chance, please do.

[ttjereth]

Awesome. If you get a chance, please do.

Okay, give me a couple of days to find the book and actually get my lazy ass around to doing the scans

[ttjereth]

I finally got around to scanning a bit of the books. I posted the pictures on one of my sites because it's easier for me to just upload all the pictures at once rather than have to resize/manage file size and individually upload each of them here. If someone wants to do it (easier with moderator access maybe?) feel free to save the images from my site and reupload them here (hotlinks won't work). Also feel free to ignore the advertisements and such, I just didn't feel like scraping together a new page template for a page that is probably only going to be linked to from here.

The book is split up into smaller stories and such, but they occasionally run into one another so if something seems cut off, it's probably where the story I intended to scan ended and a new story began and I got sick of scanning (the scanner being all the way on the other side of the room from the PC and all ). I numbered the images 1-1, 1-2 and such indicating Story 1-Part 1, Story 2-Part 2, and so on. My gallery program has the stories out of order, but the individual parts are in order, so you should be able to just read through them in the order the gallery presents them.

Also pay no mind to the site they are on, there's really not much of anything there yet and I'm still in the middle of actually setting the site up (along with several others that I haven't really touched very much in the past year ), there might be a handful of interesting videos or something there, but I can't even guarantee everything is working yet (or still for the videos).

Anyway, the books aren't too bad, as I mentioned before. There's a little bit of the normal "we are this way, they are that way" type of over-generalization and stereotyping, but it's not really that bad and most of it is done for comedic effect. I have actually tried to pick out a couple of the more possibly "controversial" bits so people can get an idea of how bad things get in the books, but like I said, there's nothing too terrible in there.

Actually most of the things that made me groan or cringe are from the husband (Lazlo) and not Oguri. I think Lazlo seems to have the worse tendency to over-generalize and over-simplify, and it seems that a lot of the mistaken stereotypes (e.g. all Americans buy recycled toilet paper because we are an "eco-country") she has actually come from Lazlo and some some of the things Lazlo writes/is portrayed doing in the comics actually make him come off as a bit pompous to me, YMMV.

Lazlo has little bits throughout the book where he has a short essay on something in Japanese and I generally found them more filled with stereotypes and assumptions than the actual comics.

The scans I posted are mostly from the first book and and one bit from the second. There is a third book which Lazlo wrote, but it's incredibly boring. More of an amateur linguistics book than anything, but there isn't a great amount of humor in it or any particularly profound/interesting observations, so my wife and I haven't bought any of the newer books where he is listed as a co-author.

There's actually another similar book by a different person called "ダーと私とウー。" (Dad, me and woo) which my wife and I found funnier than these. The other book had a lot more laugh out loud moments, but it also had a lot more "yelling 'bullshit' out loud moments" as well, and tends to be a lot worse with the stereotypes and overgeneralizations. I wanted to put some scans of it up as well, but it would be easier to single-handedly discover the ark of the covenant than trying to figure out where my wife put something away.

国際結婚※マンガにっき ダーと私とウー。



EDIT
Here's the scans! Forgot the bloody link to the whole reason for this post!
http://www.amusedme.com/my-darling-is-a-foreigner/

[Iraira]

Thanks for posting parts of the book, but I gots a question. On a separate part of your homepage, who is the hot naked chick on the heart-shaped bed?

[ttjereth]

Thanks for posting parts of the book, but I gots a question. On a separate part of your homepage, who is the hot naked chick on the heart-shaped bed?

I actually went and looked thinking maybe there was something on there somewhere.

I host another site that a friend runs (err was running until the site broke and I haven't gotten around to fixing the software-side of things ) with pictures that might fit that description, but otherwise I'm guessing you're yanking my chain?

[Iraira]

I actually went and looked thinking maybe there was something on there somewhere.

I host another site that a friend runs (err was running until the site broke and I haven't gotten around to fixing the software-side of things ) with pictures that might fit that description, but otherwise I'm guessing you're yanking my chain?

All I can say after seeing those pictures is "I will never look at salami the same way, again."

[ttjereth]

All I can say after seeing those pictures is "I will never look at salami the same way, again."

I have one of those Japanese image board programs set up on there where anybody can post anything anonomously, and I have barely even looked at it the past year, so it was a legimate worry

[Adhesive]

I finally got around to scanning a bit of the books.

Yeah, finally...jeesh, it took you all of what, a day? It would have taken me a week just to find the damn thing. Awesome work! Much appreciated.

[ttjereth]

Yeah, finally...jeesh, it took you all of what, a day? It would have taken me a week just to find the damn thing. Awesome work! Much appreciated.

I had the opportunity to ask my wife where they were. If I had needed to dig through the closet for them on my own you may have never heard from me again.