Me Man, Me Bake!

At my schools there is a Japanese etiquette that if you go somewhere you should buy small sweets, or omiyage, for your colleagues to give them on your return. This is sometimes somewhat of an issue for me as I'm going somewhere most weekends and I also work at three schools, with in total about 85-90 teachers. A small trip would cost me a small fortune in sweets alone. so I don't always buy something.

However, for Christmas, I wanted to do something nice for my teachers and rather than buying a sweet, I thought why not make them something! Small cakes would be ideal, but I don't have an oven. I do, however, know how to make Welsh Cakes which are cooked in a pan, thanks to an old Welsh flatmate of mine. So I set about a mass batch production of mini Welsh Cakes (Modifying the recipe to have chocolate instead of raisons). They came out well and over two evenings I churned out over 150 mini cakes, making enough for my evening class as well and extra for hungry teachers. There reception was great, however, something of a patterned response emerged. Every time offered someone a cake, I was met with the question “Did your wife make these?” When I told them I made them, there was surprised, followed with something along the lines of “Really. Well done! They taste good”. However, after a while it became a little patronising. Just because I'm a man, why shouldn't I be able to cook?!?

It appears the divide between men and women in Japan is still stronger than I thought and that men of my age don't cook, clean or any kind of housework for that matter. Obviously this comes from a time when women didn't go to work, but women are working now and yet they still have the responsibility of cooking, cleaning and childcare. This coming from school teachers that only last week cancelled my afternoon lesson to educate their students on equal rights, this just smacks with a sense of irony. Japanese men, cook for your women folk!