Dear Mary | 1 May 2010

Q. Further to your correspondence with ‘name withheld’ of Yokohama, I have a recurring problem with my beautiful Japanese wife of many years and I was wondering if you could help. Here in Australia, when meeting people for the first time, they often ask, ‘Where did you meet your wife?’ I then usually explain that we met here in Australia. But if they do not ask, therein lies the problem because I know they may be silently coming to the wrong conclusion. It is common here for desperate, lonely farmers to purchase ‘mail order’ brides from the Philippines and other poor countries. My worry is that I don’t want people to think that that was how we came to be together. While nobody in their right mind would confuse me with Leonardo diCaprio, I do believe I cut a certain dash and am perfectly capable of finding a mate without purchasing one.