FRIENDS in NAGOYA anyone? I miss shopping and girl-talking

[Anonymous]

I`m SO lonely. Okay, not in the love-sick kinda sense. I live with my boyfriend (a native) and we are very much in love, engaged, all that good stuff. But he is awfully busy since he is in his last year of college and is applying to like 50 companies, so we never go out like we did in the summer. Understandable. (Plus I won`t get to go to school until the winter.)

But this time around, I have a very bad bout of lonliness. I`m a girl. I want to dress up, go out, have fun, go shopping, karaoke, drinking and sit in Starbucks and gossip with other girls. I`m asking my best friend when she can visit me, but it`s going to take a while. I would really like to meet and make some female friends in the Nagoya area. I miss my friends, and even though my boyfriend likes shopping too.. of course men are gonna get tired of it before girls do. I am in desperate need of some girl`s days/nights out!!!!!!!

By the way, it is so hard to make friends with Japanese women. Of course, my boyfriend`s sister is my friend and I have one friend in Tokyo who I met on a homestay program.. but I can`t see them regularly. If anyone who is reading this isn`t in the area, but can sympathize with me, I`d love to hear your comments too! Thanks.

[smallworld]

Margaret,

I know exactly what you mean. Even living here in Tokyo, I suffer from a serious lack of girlfriends! I agree it's really hard to make friends with Japanese women, but I think it's just as hard to make friends with foreign women- most are here short term only (I'm married to a 'native' too so I'm here for a while).

I belong to Married In Japan, an online group for foreign women married to (or engaged to) Japanese men, and it really helps to have people to talk to, if only online. Why not join MIJ? It's free, visit:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarriedinJapan/

I know there are a few members in the Nagoya area, you might be able to set up a get-together.

There's also AFWJ, another group for FW married to JM. There's a fee to join, but I think that gets you stuff like fairly frequent local and national get-togethers, a bi-monthly journal etc:

http://home.att.ne.jp/surf/cei/AFWJ.html

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Hi I too am engaged to a native in japan. We are gonna get married next month. I also feel lonely not having any freinds here in japan. I live in the Saitama area making tokyo kind of far and very costly to even go. small World thank you for the HP I have just joined the club i hope to make freinds there.

[smallworld]

Glad you joined, Happy. We have several members in Saitama, but I'm not sure where exactly. If you post a self-introduction and ask about other members in Saitama, you'll be able to find out how close you are to others.
And if you have any questions about life and marriage in Japan, post them- you'll get some good advice.

See you at MIJ!