Aware of the struggle, thirty-nine year old Gotchi Hitomi, who is a housewife herself, set up a daytime volunteer classroom for the sake of immigrant wives and children. Each week Gotchi and several other volunteers who are mostly Japanese housewives and retired men gather to teach a group varying in size from 12 to 30, basic Japanese. Miyage, who attended a teachers college in Thailand, met her husband while she was working as a greeter at the Fortune Hotel in Bangkok in 1997. This March, after getting married in Thailand, Miyage came back to Japan with her husband, who holds a job as an electrical engineer. Even though everyday gets easier, Miyage still faces many struggles.
Communication is the most difficult part.
My husband speaks a little bit of broken English and a few words of Thai and I speak very little Japanese. Miyage spends most of her time alone, studying Japanese, learning how to do Japanese cooking, and watching television. Although Miyage has no hopes for holding a job in Japan, she's hoping to have children in a few years, after she improves her Japanese. Shibuya explained that although many people don't realize it, a portion of the inter-cultural marriages that take place are between Japanese women and foreign men. Twenty-four year old Japanese Masai Suzuki and 27 year old Indonesian Harris Erwanto who married nearly two years ago are part of that portion.