Meanwhile, 25 years ago...
A couple of years ago I'd asked my friend Lou to pick up a box of photos of our wedding at my dad's house. These were photos my parents had taken on their trip to Japan. Almost all of the photos were there except for the ones that were of the actual ceremony itself. Those had been used in a photo album that nobody seems to remember what happened to it, but the negatives remained. So this month, I took the negatives to the local Fujicolor print shop and had these photos developed. I'll share them here. These are photos I haven't seen in over 20 years.
March 23rd was the final day of school before spring break. At the time, I was teaching in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture. That was the day of the school closing ceremony. After work, I packed up everything I needed and took the shinkansen to Tokyo. My parents had flown in the USA the night before, so I rendezvoused with them at the ryokan I had made reservations for in Ikebukuro that night. Then on Saturday, March 24th, we took the Seibu Ikebukuro line to the church in Tokorozawa for the wedding ceremony.
This was a day that changed my life forever. I was 25, and I suppose we were married by today's standards. But I knew that I wanted to marry Mayu, and to dedicate my life to making her happy forever. Even after I had moved to Japan the year before, we only saw each other about once a month. Conventional "wisdom" says that people need to live together before getting married, but statistically such relationships end in divorce far more than those who choose not to do so. 25 years later, my wife and I are still together. The second day that changed my life forever was when our daughter was born, but that is a story for another time.
Here are photos from our wedding day.
Here's Mayu and I with her family: Her crazy grandmother, her father, mother, and her "little" sister Yukari (who is taller than Mayu).
And here we are with my parents.
These are people from my church I attended in Akashi. This is Junko, Setsuko, and Sara. Junko and Setsuko are sisters. Sara is from New Zealand, whom I believe was an English teacher as well. Along with Pastor Ueda and his wife, they all came together in a van to attend our wedding.
Here is Mom helping me get ready for the ceremony.
Here's Mayu entering the ceremony with her father.
We lit this "unity candle" as part of the ceremony.
The wedding kiss.
Pastor Araki prayed with us over our marriage.
Pastor Araki pronounced us husband and wife.
Mom was so happy at the wedding that day.
This is me with my friend Hideyuki. I knew him from the APIA club at ASU West, which I went into detail about in Greg's Life #143: Memories of my college days at ASU West.
The reception afterwards was nothing fancy, but the food was fantastic and we had a great time. Mayu wore a light yellow dress and this was the only day she's ever worn high heels in her life. It was a beautiful day.
I was going through my old email outbox and I found this email I sent to my friends from the Vineyard Church I went to, those I knew from the 18-29 Bible study I was a part of from 1996-2000. I thought I'd include the email to share here.
From: Greg
To: Dan, Tony, Jason, Joe, Sarah, Serge, Sean, Tara, Lisa, Roy, Elena, Lee, David
Subject: Hello to my friends from VCFNP! Date: 4/18/2001
On Saturday, March 24th, I married Mayumi, who became my pen-pal six years ago. God has blessed me with a good Christian wife to spend the rest of my life with. Some of you may already know that my parents flew to Japan for the wedding. Thanks to the members from VCF Tokorozawa who volunteered to help our wedding, the wedding ceremony and reception went perfectly. The only thing that was different from what we planned is that we had asked the chorus to sing the Vineyard song "All Over the World", but they sang it in English instead of Japanese like we wanted. And I made a big mistake of not bowing to Mayu's father when he presented her hand to me. It's a typical custom in Japan, but I completely forgot when the time came. My mistake didn't occur to me until after the ceremony, and I had to suppress a Homer Simpson "Doh!" reaction in front of everyone.After the wedding we stayed for a couple of days in Tokyo with my parents and then we took a train to Mayu's family's house in Nagano Prefecture (where the 98 Winter Olympics were) to pack stuff into her car and drive it clear to Himeji, the town in Hyogo Prefecture where I live. It was about a six hour drive. It was my first time to drive a Japanese car with the steering wheel on the opposite side, but I quickly adjusted. After spending a night in Himeji, we were off to Hiruzen, a small town in the mountains along the border of Okayama and Tottori Prefectures. The friend of my vice principal at my old school I taught at has a cabin in the mountains there, and he offered to let us use it as our honeymoon. It was a nice place to be completely alone with just each other, and it allowed my parents to stay at my apartment and save money by not staying at a hotel.
The cabin was nice, except for one problem: insects. They weren't dangerous and didn't bite or anything... they're just stinky when you kill them. They're about the size of your thumbnail and really stupid. I was using the vacuum cleaner to suck them up. Fortunately there weren't too many during the day and if we kept most of the lights in the cabin off at night, there weren't too many then either. It's a nice cabin, but it has cracks for the bugs to crawl in. Despite this, we were able to have a romantic time. We were snowed in for four days, and we didn't have snow chains for the tires on Mayu's car. But once the snow melted away, the bugs were coming inside in full force, and the vacuum cleaner stopped working because it was too clogged full of pissed off bugs, and it was time to leave. We spent the next two nights in a traditional Japanese-style hotel in the nearby town of Yubara, known for its many onsen (hot springs).
And now we've begun our new life together in my small, one-room apartment in Himeji. Fortunately, we'll be able to move into a two-room apartment upstairs in August. I've been transferred to a new school to teach English at, but I miss my old school. Asahi Junior High is the largest junior high in Himeji with over 1,000 students, and it was a train ride and two bicycle rides away. My new School, Hakuro, is the smallest with only about 170 students, but it's within easy walking distance from my apartment and it's directly across the street from Himeji Castle. And today Mayu is working her new job at a flower shop at the train station. She loves flowers, and she enjoys her job there.
I guess marriage is something that needs to be experienced to be understood. A month or two before the marriage, I went through a "pre-marital blues" phase which I really wasn't expecting at all. I was happy to getting married and I never had second thoughts on marrying her, but for some reason I felt like marriage would force me to become a completely different person and that I would have to redefine who I am. But now that it's after, I realize that I am still the same person, and Mayu is still the same person. The only difference is that we're married and living together now. I was afraid that my personality would be radically changed, but that's not the case. My life is very different now, though. My lifestyle has changed a bit, but I am still the same person. But I'm learning much more flexibility and patience than I ever did before.
I realize now that marriage is only as romantic as I choose to make it. It just doesn't happen on its own. It takes work and effort. I never had the misconception beforehand that marriage would somehow solve my life's problems. We've just decided together to make God our #1 priority in our marriage, and we know that God will bless us for that. We can't just let our feelings carry us around or we'll never make our marriage work. We made the decision from the beginning to honor God through our relationship. And I am so glad that we both had saved ourselves for marriage. I always knew that this was important, and I understand the reason much more now that I'm married. And more important is that I married a Christian girl. With God between both of us, our marriage is a three dimensional love. And through God we can overcome any cultural obstacles and miscommunications between us. Life is going well here in Japan, and now that I'm married I'm looking at this country with a whole new set of eyes. Life has become more beautiful. We'll be taking a trip to America for a month this summer, so I hope to see some of you then.
Your friend, Greg
Thanks for looking!
Visiting the Plum headquarters building.
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"However far away, I will always love you. However long I stay, I will always love you. Whatever words I say, I will always love you." ~The Cure, "Lovesong"
mail: greg -atsign- stevethefish -dot- net