Housework is Appealing: Japanese Manga

If I were to teach Home Economics (or whatever it is called now), I would have students read manga. 

The excellent series What Did You Eat Yesterday? focuses on meals prepared (usually) by Shiro, a lawyer who likes good food yet has the budgeting habits of a parent who grew up at the end of the Depression (yes, I am speaking autobiographically as the child of such parents). 

Consequently, he looks for deals. He uses all the food that he buys. He asks himself beforehand whether he will eat all of a purchase. He gets creative about using ingredients. It was reading What Did You Eat Yesterday? that inspired me to buy more like a European than an American. 

It isn't that the former is better than the latter. It is rather that I learned to buy in accordance with my own budgeting and eating habits: buy food for the week, not for the month. Use everything. Buy what I actually will eat. 

The Way of the Househusband actually inspires me to care about home maintenance: cleaning clothes, getting rid of bugs, using incense to create a pleasant atmosphere, and ways of getting dog (cat) hair off a coat. 

Hilariously, Tatsu, the ex-Yakuza househusband, does in fact teach a Home Ec course in which he assumes that a juvenile delinquent will, of course, decorate his apron!