White Wedding

When one of the students in the lab first told me that he would invite me to his "wedding party" I thought that was nice but I probably wouldn't want to fork over the cash to travel all the way to Chiba (his home town to attend). When I opened the invitation, my mind changed. He had put together a beautiful invitation, but in addition to that he included a full translation of the entire thing just for me. He included a promise to help "compensate" those of us travelling to the wedding and to translate the entire wedding just for me. With an invitation like that, who can refuse. Here is a photo of the inviation.

Shawn and I left on Saturday morning. We flew to Tokyo and then took a train out to Makuhari (the city where the wedding was held). We arrived with enough time to enjoy a bit of Makuhari and took a nice long walk at a local Japanese garden and along the beach sunset. The beach there is the northern border of Tokyo Bay and we could just make out the Tokyo skyline through the smog. Makuhari is a beatiful modern city with amazing architecture. The hotels in the downtown are really something to see.


While we were walking in the garden we saw some young women wearing kimono. Their father told us that they were celebrating their 20th year. During January of the year that young people in Japan turn 20, they celebrate by wearing kimono and having some sort of party with friends and family. It was kind of a special treat for us to see these women in formal traditional clothing in a beatiful garden.

We stayed in a hotel that was.... well lets just say that it wasn't in the heart of Makuhari. Our breakfast was included with our stay, but I think that I have mentioned before that Japanese people don't eat what we think of as a typical breakfast. They were kind enough to bring us "American" breakfast, but the scrambled eggs were pretty raw and the weiners were still cold in the middle so we ended up in Starbucks after we checked out of the hotel.

Before we checked out, however, we asked the front desk staff for help preparing our wedding gift. In Japan, it is customary to give money instead of a gift, and the cash is supposed to be new notes directly from the bank (called shinsatsu). There are also special envelopes that are used for the cash which look deceptively like envelopes used for funerals - I asked repeatedly in the store when I bought it which one I was buying. I had been tipped off to these customs beforehand so was ready with the envelope and the crisp bills, but I was also told that there was a complicated way of placing the notes and folding the card back up. I had tried to get instructions online but failed, so in the morning conscripted the help of the front desk staff (photo below). It took 4 of them 10 minutes of consultation, a phone call to a friend, an internet search and a special pen, but they managed to do it for us.

The wedding was very fancy and not traditional Japanese style. We were made to feel like very special guests too because at every transition in the event, there was a staff person waiting in the wings who would appear in front of us and hand us a translation sheet describing what was ahead and directing us where to go. The ceremony was called Zinzen-shiki (=ceremony in front of guests). It is meant to be a "western style" wedding, and it was.... mostly. Some things were not quite what we would expect to see, but overall it was a western wedding. They got married in a church-style room, walked down the aisle, exchanged rings and made a pledge to each other. They also had a "first kiss" but that was a bit awkward and Shawn and I did well to keep from laughing out loud when he went in for a kiss and she turned away and he ended up kissing her forehead.

After the wedding we went out onto the steps of the "chapel" and threw rose petals on the new couple. The bride threw a bouquet for the single ladies in the crowd, but in proper Japanese form, the girls were too shy to catch it and it bounced off one girls head and landed on another's shoe and no one wanted to be the first to pick it up. I guy from the crowd picked it up and handed it to one the lady whose head got in the way initially.

With the ceremony out of the way, it was on to "party time". The lunch was held at the same hotel in a beautiful banquet room. The decorations were simple and beautiful and the food was amazing. We feasted on shark fin soup (ok, I wasn't tickled to be eating this as a marine ecologist... but did so just the same - photo below), tempura, abalone, heaps of sushi, desert, cake and loads more. There were toasts to the bride and groom, cutting of the cake, a couple of slide shows and one special song sung to the bride and groom by a talented guest.

The bride and groom both wore white for the ceremony in the chapel and initial toasts. They left the lunch after about half an hour and returned in traditional kimono (kimono). There were a couple of other guests who also wore kimono, but the male guests were all wearing dark suits and most of the women wore dresses. Despite being unable to understand most of what was said at the wedding, we were made to feel very welcome and comfortable and enjoyed attending very much.

The weather down there was sunny and much warmer than Sapporo. We are back home now, 36 hours later (including 3 hours flying and 4.5 hours on trains) to another snowy night. My language lessons start up again tomorrow morning - I think that I will have a hard time getting out of my warm bed.