This past Saturday, a good friend of mine, 聡 (Satoshi), got married to his long time girlfriend, ゆき (Yuki, don't know her kanji). I know Satoshi from my basketball team, the G Suns. He's the resident big man on the team, and always throws nice outlet passes.
This also happened to be my first real Japanese wedding. I had been to a bunch of 二次会's (nijikai - wedding reception-type party) before, but I had never been close enough to the couple to actually be invited to the real thing. There's a lot of etiquette involved in a Japanese wedding's preparation (RSVP, special envelopes, real polite language), so I was kinda surprised to see the actual ceremony.
(On a side note: I had talked to my boy Nick Riley about this a while ago, but somewhere along the line, we had become Japanese snobs. In the sense that, when we came to Japan, we didn't know one Japanese phrase. To be honest, I am pretty proud of my Japanese, but I really shouldn't be critiquing other foreigners' Japanese, as there are other people who are ridiculously better than I am - Joel, Sean, Tim. But, when I hear someone say they are very good at it, and then proceed to be terrible...it's like nails on a chalkboard. Really.)
The wedding had Western and Japanese elements to it, which was cool. What was interesting though, was the Japanese interpretation of the Western style wedding. In the chapel, there was an American pastor, who was doing the service in Japanese, which was pretty interesting. (See above.) What is lacked though, is the solemnity of a traditional wedding. The entire time cell phones were out, pictures being taken, conversations held. I was a little surprised, but, when in Rome.
After that, we moved on to the reception, which was awesome. Satoshi and Yuki were seated at the very front of a big ball room, with all the guests seated by affiliation. (I was with the ballers.) There were slideshows, speeches, crying, and the team had a little routine set up. Our point guard, Ryuji, got a golden basketball and had all of the team members sign it. (I signed, we gotta protect the lane!). We lined up around the room, and passed it around to all the members until finally, it got to the front where Satoshi was sitting, and the captain of the team handed it to him, saying, 'For your special day, since you lost your balls, heres a golden ball.' It was awesome.
After that, we headed to the afterparty, from where things get a little blurry. A bunch of stuff went down, but these were the only things that I got pictures of. Good times.
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