Tất cả các mối quan hệ ư?

trong bài, có ông lão 80 tuổi (đi gặp các phụ huynh khác) tự hào kể về cậu con trai 50 tuổi của mình đang là thành viên bks một công ty điện :)

-----

It’s a steamy (oi bức) summer afternoon in the Japanese city of Osaka, where a group of around 60 men and women have gathered for a session of “omiai,” or matchmaking (mai mối), to find true love (tình yêu đích thực).

They mingle (hòa vào) away, hopping from one end of the conference room at the Sakai Chamber of Commerce building to another as they assess potential matches (sự hòa hợp tiềm ẩn) – and the competition.

But this is no ordinary speed-dating (hẹn hò tốc độ) event.

Few of the participants are talking about their favorite hobbies (sở thích yêu thích), movies or restaurants, or indeed, even about themselves. They are talking about their grown-up, still single children who they are hoping to match up and marry off.

One woman, in her 60s, speaks proudly of her 34-year-old son, a public elementary school teacher. A man in his 80s talks affectionately about his career-minded son, 49, who works as a controller (kiểm soát viên) at an electric company.

Each of the parents has forked out 14,000 yen ($96) to attend this event, hosted by the matchmaking agency Association of Parents of Marriage Proposal Information. And they are all hoping to meet someone just like them; a parent whose still single daughter or son might be the perfect match for their own lonesome (đứa con trai cô đơn) child.

It’s not that Japan, a notoriously (khét tiếng) work-obsessed (ám ảnh công việc) nation where time is at a premium, hasn’t tried out the more direct approach to speed-dating, where the youngsters do it for themselves. It’s more that leaving the young to it doesn’t seem to be working.

With rising living costs (chi phí sinh hoạt ngày càng tăng), poor economic prospects (triển vọng kinh tế kém) and the demanding work culture conspiring against them, fewer Japanese today are opting to get married and have children.