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Published: October 7th 2010
As I'm sure many of you know (either via Facebook or my mother), Chris and I got married. It may seem like it was too soon or rushed or what have you, but we spent a lot of time discussing it, weighing our options, etc. We were planning on getting married in the spring anyway, and when we looked at the advantages of getting married sooner, we figured the sooner the better!
Neither one of us wanted a big wedding, and I hate to disappoint, but there was no romantic proposal. That's just not who we are, and we wanted to do things our way. I do have a ring - a very pretty amethyst - but that was as far as we wanted to go with wedding traditions.
(Ed.: When girls say they don't want diamonds, sometimes they really mean it!)
But I'm getting ahead of myself. How exactly does one get married in Japan? If you're Japanese, apparently it's very straightforward. You take your family book to the town hall, and the bride's name gets added to the groom's family's book. I'm sure there's a bit more to it than that, but that's the general gist.
For two non-Japanese people who just happen to live in Japan, it's still fairly simple. We filled out an affidavit saying we're both of legal age and eligible for marriage. Very conveniently, 99% of our friends here are lawyers, so we stopped by Kevin's office and he gave us the official marriage briefing (essentially, Chris needs to support me financially since the military considers me a dependent and that he can't cheat on me. Apparently it's totally cool with the military if I cheat on him, though. I don't see how that's fair, but who am I to question the Air Force?) We then needed to find a translator.
I randomly called a number off the list of translators provided by the law office. Turns out Nakamura-san is the nicest, cutest Japanese woman EVER. I stopped by her office in Okinawa City on Monday, and she immediately translated our crazy American names into nice Japanese katakana (I'm Kyasurin Mari Hencheru and Chris is Kurisutofya Maikuru Kobakku, haha). She gave me a form for our witnesses to sign, and the next day I dropped it off so she could fill in their details. She recognized our witnesses' names as other
lawyers (apparently she gets a lot of marriage affidavits from Chris' office) and got really excited about how she was finally going to meet the legal officers at our wedding.
Wednesday, we got all dressed up in our wedding finest (Chris wore his dress uniform and I wore a cotton sundress from H&M), pulled our witnesses away from their desks and set out for the town hall. Nakamura-san met us there, and she gave me a small bouquet of flowers. This was very good because Chris can't seem to ever get me flowers when he should (you'll remember that he was saved on Valentine's Day in
Scotland when the restaurant brought me a rose at dinner). Nakamura-san turned over all of our paperwork to the town hall clerk, who apparently takes her job VERY seriously. We started to get worried after about fifteen minutes of her poring over Japanese translation and comparing to the original English. She didn't like how our English one had our middle initials but the translation had been expanded to include our full names. Once we straightened that out, she looked at us and said "Japan accepts your marriage petition." (We like to think the
Emperor himself accepted our marriage.) And...that was it. No vows, no "You may kiss the bride"...just some photos of the two of us with Nakamura-san and Steve and Travis (our witnesses) in their camo uniforms.
(Ed.: We may work on the vows at some point, but as far as Japan goes, it's interesting to think how little ceremony's involved in their marriages and divorces. I like it, to be honest!)
So, we are officially married as of 11:21am, October 6, year Heisei 22 (aka 2010). I picked up our marriage certificates today - our Japanese one looks so cool that we're going to get it framed. We've got a lot of things to do on base to make everything official with the US and the military. And we've got to head to the immigration office soon so that I can get an official stamp allowing me to stay through July with no visa.
I've mostly gotten my life together here. I spend my days going to yoga and Japanese classes, cooking my way through my vegetarian cookbooks, writing (I contribute articles to brighthub.com on teaching English), trying not to get lost in the Okinawan streets in my
little red car (it's hard to navigate with no street names and no addresses) and attending required office events with Chris. I am also an eigo sensei (English teacher) at two Japanese schools. One is an after-school program for elementary school students. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I teach kids aged 3-11 how to speak English. I nearly fell out of my chair when my youngest student raised her hand and asked, "May I go to the bafroom?" That is more English than my fifth graders in France could speak after four years of classes. Plus they're SUPER cute. I also teach four preschool and Kindergarten classes during the day on Tuesday. They are incredibly adorable but beyond exhausting. Starting Monday, I'll be teaching classes for an English club at a local technical college.
In addition to all the fun cultural activities I'm going to be doing here on the island (kimono-wearing, tangerine picking, murder mystery nights, etc), we're also in the process of planning our honeymoon - it's going to be amazing. We purchased our tickets to Singapore today, and we are also going to visit Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur and Melaka) and Indonesia (Jakarta). 25 days until we leave!
And now that Chris is my life and travel partner, you'll being seeing him pop up as Editor (as in this update), Co-blogger, and maybe even Blogger (when I can convince him to write for me, haha).
Much love to everyone back home!
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Grandma & Pappy
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Congratulations
Congratulations and much happiness to you. Welcome to the family, Chris, we look forward to meeting you. Enjoy your life together. Love to you both.