Weddings Galore

I'm reaching back a little bit, but thought I'd let everyone know about all the weddings we've been going to recently. Every weekend in October seemed to be another wedding for one of Yuko's close friends.

First, one of her best friends from high school and college, Hitomi, got hitched to Mayuge (that's his nickname, which means "eyebrow" in Japanese - take a look at the picture and you'll see why - his real name is Koji). Hitomi, along with Sawako (aka "Charlie") and Tama-chan, were Yuko's best friends from high school; they still get together often, and us husbands or S/Os of the ladies also get along really well. These 4 girls refer to themselves as "SAPS", short for a ridiculous nickname they gave themselves in high school which I will not recount here . . .

Those of you who attended our wedding in Gig Harbor back in August 2003 will remember Hitomi as one of the bridesmaids (with Charlie, Tama-chan and my sister Katie) and Mayuge as a guest. Those of you who attended my bachelor party will remember Mayuge falling asleep at the table during dinner due to jet lag - I don't remember much of the evening after that myself, though!

Hitomi & Mayuge's wedding was a lot of fun - they had the ceremony in a chapel at their university, Sophia, in downtown Tokyo. Then we all walked down to the Akasaka Prince Hotel for the reception in a huge ballroom. The food was great; Mayuge prepared a video and picture slide show introducing the couple with photos and video of them from the time when they were little kids to when they met and began dating in college. It even included some video and photos of times when SAPS had gathered at our place in Tokyo.

Finally, no Japanese wedding would be complete without some fraternity-esque binge drinking. Mayuge's friends were forcing him to down beer, wine and sake throughout. Towards the end of the wedding, Hitomi and Mayuge wheeled out a big barrel of sake, and had a person at each table of guests down a small boxful. Guess who had to do it for our table?


The weekend after Hitomi & Mayuge's wedding, we went to a more subdued wedding for a friend of Yuko's from college named Kinu. Kinu's wedding was at a really upscale wedding hall in the Meguro area of Tokyo. It had its own chapel on site, and a reception hall that opened up onto a beautiful garden courtyard.

The ceremony was a bit odd, to be honest. After the guests were all seated, the groom, Daisuke, just walked down the aisle by himself to the front, with all his friends whooping and hollering. He stood up front on the stage for a few minutes, very embarrassed as this continued, until Kinu entered on the arm of her father, like a conventional US wedding. When it was time to kiss the bride, Daisuke gave her an embarrassed peck on the cheek.

This is one of the unique oddities of Japanese weddings, and relationships in general - they are generally scared to death of public displays of affection. Many Japanese couples that I have known to be dating or even married for years will never touch each other in public - I have never seen them kiss, hold hands, even momentarily brush or touch each other. So the "you may now kiss the bride" part of the western wedding tradition is a really awkward dilemma for these couples when they have a western wedding. The forehead or, like today, the cheek is usually where the terrified groom kisses the bride.

They also handed out little rose shaped candles to all the guests, and after the two exchanged their vows, had us all light our candles, hold them lit for about a minute, and then blow them out all together, supposedly as a symbol of our wishes for their happiness. The pews were really close together - I was afraid my candle would cause the elaborately styled hair of the exquisitely groomed young ladies in front of me to explode into a ball of fire.

But instead of everyone just being able to quietly enjoy these moments, the emcee of the wedding, an annoyingly cheery short-haired woman in her late 30s, began narrating the proceedings for us in a high-pitched voice like nails on a chalkboard, and didn't stop until the reception was over a few hours later. "Here comes Kinue down the aisle with her father; what a beautiful dress she's wearing, isn't it cute? Look at the ring pillow, Kinu made it herself, isn't it cute? " She chirped on and on incessantly about nothing in particular, but whatever it was everything was "cute" ("kawai-rashii"). We were all ready to strangle this lady by the end of the wedding.

Other than the emcee's constrant stream of meaningless babble, though, the wedding was very nice. Their was an interesting dynamic between Daisuke's mostly male, rugby player guests from college, and Kinue's Ojyo-sama friends from Sophia University, who did not mingle very much. Ojyo-sama are well-to-do Japanese young women who dress to the hilt, are generally very status conscious, and have hobbies like playing piano, baking, and knitting. They'll typically work jobs as office ladies or secretaries or something until they get married to a suitably well-to-do husband, and then they quit and have their families. These sort of women were in abundance.

Anyway, Daisuke and Kinu do seem very happy. They're living out in Shiga now, near Kyoto.















There was one more wedding I really wanted to attend, but couldn't. It was my friend Jason's wedding, in Oahu. He and Mizuho got married, but I missed it for a combination of reasons. Best wishes Jason and Mizuho, I hope you had a wonderful time - please send pictures!