Loose, undisplined and unorganised Taiwan v.s. Rigid, displined and organised Japan

Whenever being a guest in my Japanese friends' house, I am always amazed by the wonderful breakfast. The rice is hot and miso soup is definitely hearty. Together with some pickled veggie or dried fish. The eggs were always cooked in the most presentable shape, just like those plastic sample outside of Japanese restaurants. In Irene's house, the julian-cut potatos and carrots were wrapped inside bacon, pan-fried until crispy. The salad were placed in the nice bows, radish and carrots were thinly slices into one uniform size. The mother in law and Irene were busy in the kitchen when I was sleeping sound upstair!

I felt very embarrassed thinking about my cooking the night before, my cucumber salad were made of roughtly sliced red onion (the thickness varies). Thank God that Irene dealt with the cucumbers. The mazzarella cheese + tomato slices were totally unpresentable (they come out in different shapes and sizes)! Come to think about it, we Taipei kids were rarely raised in a full-time housewife home. Our foods were as not presentable as our mothers' cooking.

Most of my friends' mothers work and most of my friends carried keys to their homes. I was the lucky few exceptions since my home is also my father's factory and company. My mother is the receptionist, factory worker, chef and cleaner. I never carried keys until moving to Canada. Only very few of my friends enjoyed the freshly prepared breakfast, frequently cooked by grand parents. Large portion of us bought breakfast from the street vendors or bakery shops. Our lunch boxes were made of leftovers from dinner the night before.

Is this the reason why Taiwanese are loose and sloppy because the environment we grew up was not refined? The duties of family members were not rigidly defined? In Japanese version of family, the mother manages finance, father earns the bread and kids study. But in Taiwanese version of family, both parents are busy making money, mother is also looking after the finance (but she is also the bread earner, the viewpoints are very different), sometimes the kids cook, clean and take care of the old after school.

A mother is the soul and spirit of a household. She sets the tone of a family and defines direction of kids' education. In Japanese culture, the mother is supposed to devoted herself to her family by cleaning the house, cooking fresh breakfastm creating a neat, clean, perfect environments for future pillars of a society. Yet the concept of women should stay home remains the mainstream thinking.