At lunch with an old pal, I cannot help but notice the puffy bags hanging beneath his eyes.

"Yeah," he groans. "I just wish they were moneybags. Why didn't somebody tell me marriage in Japan would be so expensive?"

I gulp down an image of his wife breezing through Harajuku boutiques while wrapped in the latest fashions and munching on a Pretz dipped in caviar. But his next words snap that vision in two.