The woman they hired to replace Marjorie was another Californian, a shy, capable, intensely intelligent young woman called Caroline. Although for various reasons, Caroline and I never got to be the best of pals, at least we were on friendly terms. I welcomed her with open arms.

After Marjorie left and Caroline joined the Sony staff, the atmosphere in the office changed completely. The men became more friendly, and although we didn’t often do this, we would all go out to eat as a group from time to time. Two new Japanese teachers, Mizutani-san and Yagi-san, were employed shortly after she left, and I got to know both of them. One of the secretaries quit and I became friendly with her replacement, Toyoda san.  Living in Japan started to get a lot more interesting.

Yagi-san was tall and serious and obviously very bright: she had studied in New York for several years, managing amazingly well on her own.  She and Mizutani-san joined Otani-san, a punctilious male teacher in his thirties who had been there for a little over a year. Otani-san was well over a head shorter than Yagi-san, but more importantly he was not her type at all.  I was thus astounded when I learned that he was considering her as a possible marriage partner.

Otani-san spoke meticulously grammatical, painstakingly careful English with an accent that was almost too good. He talked a lot about practicing English, as though it was a musical instrument. I hated the idea that someone would speak English or Japanese merely to practice it – but oddly enough, I always got the feeling that this was exactly what he was doing:  trotting his considerable language skill out like a show pony so that people would ooh and ahh over it. He once told me how important it was for a wife to prepare her husband’s miso shiru, the bean paste soup the Japanese tend to have every day, just the way he liked it – that when a wife could do that, her husband knew that his wife truly loved him. Then he turned to Yagi-san and asked her rather pointedly what she put into her miso shiru. Spring onions? Tofu? Pork, perhaps – or potatoes?

I saw Yagi-san bristle. ‘I don’t make miso shiru,’ she said tersely. ‘That’s my mother’s job.’

‘Oh, but every young lady should learn how to make miso shiru!’ he parried.  'It is a very important skill to master!'  Yagi-san and I exchanged a look. Then she picked up her books and hurried off to teach her class. You could practically feel the scorn dripping off her as she left the room.

Later, when we were out of Otani-san’s hearing, she vented her rage. ‘Since when does he get off thinking that I am going to be in the least bit attracted to him?  I’d rather die than make his miso shiru!  God, I can see him looking at me, appraising, thinking, Hmmm, a little old perhaps, but she might just do, in a pinch.’  She shivered. ‘I’ll bet he thinks I took this job just so I could meet someone like him and get married. Yuck.’

‘Did he really mean that he was interested in you – just asking you how you made your miso shiru?’

‘Oh, take my word for it. That was his way of testing the water. If I'd expressed even the tiniest bit of interest, he'd be inviting me out for coffee. Then asking me for my telephone number, wanting to meet my parents.'  She shuddered again.  'As if I'd ever consider going out with him even if he were the very last man in the world. Even if I was absolutely desperate.'

I have often thought of Yagi-san and how hard it must have been for her. She had excellent English skills, had been to a good university and managed on her own in a foreign country for several years.  And yet her salary was lower than mine, her chances of promotion were slim, and she was probably expected to get married to someone eventually. Such as Otani-san.  If she had been bitter about this – and I often suspected she was – I could hardly blame her.

Mizutani-san was a practical young woman who had studied at a posh university in the U.K. and spoke English with a proper British accent. She had been married for two years. One day when we were having coffee together, the subject of philandering husbands came up.

‘Japanese men are the worst! They have so many affairs!  They expect the wife to be perfect and do everything, then they still go out and have girlfriends! They are – well, they are quite beastly.  Male chauvinist pigs.’

That Japanese men had affairs wasn’t exactly news to me, but I had thought that the men who did this were generally older ones. ‘Younger men don’t have affairs, do they?’

She put down her coffee cup. ‘Oh, yes, they jolly well do.’

‘I think that men being unfaithful to their wives is pretty much an international thing.’

‘Be that as it may. But Japanese men are the worst.  So after we got married, I told my husband, go right ahead and have an affair. Be my guest. But I will divorce you immediately.’

‘And what did he say to that?’

‘He didn’t say anything. But now he knows he’d be in big trouble if he did. So I know he’ll be careful.’

‘You mean careful not to have an affair?’

She shrugged. ‘Careful not to have an affair, yes. Or careful not to let me find out.’ What I thought was interesting was that although she would have preferred him not to have an affair at all, an affair that was well concealed was not out of the question.