A Japanese Wedding

Last night I attended my first Japanese wedding. It was on Zamami between two people who have lived here awhile, but are from the Japanese mainland. I didn’t know either of them especially well, but I was really happy to be extended an invitation.


One of the coolest parts for me was seeing all the young people of Zamami dressed up. It’s ordinarily a crowd who is clad in surf attire, or whatever they can find on the floor. There was an amusing mix of people who could count on one hand the number of times they’ve worn high heels or a suit (and hence were getting help with their ties at the event) and those who had a solid sense of fashion. I grouped myself on the conservative side of the latter group (I really wished I’d brought back my pink-and-blue tie from America). I’ve had plenty of suit-wearing experience and feel pretty comfortable dressing up.


The event went like this: (1)opening speech by the emcee (2)‘reveal’ of the couple (3) something with the parents (4) eating, watching performances by a Ryukyu (traditional Okinawan) dance, hula, and taiko drumming (5) humorous skits that were intended for people who speak Japanese (6) bride and groom go change then come out and light candles on each table then cut the cake (7) bride and groom give speeches to their parents – everybody cries (8) bride and groom’s best friends give speeches and everybody continues crying (I even felt like crying, but I didn’t know why) (9) bride and groom take gifts, which, as far as I could tell, were envelopes with money (10) bride, groom, and parents leave the room and greet us all on our way out, then give us a gift (cookies).



This was neither a traditional Japanese nor Okinawan ceremony. They were actually officially married a year ago and this was just the public ceremony. The bride and groom didn’t dress in any traditional Japanese clothing – only western attire. The event was low-key, which is why it was on Zamami. As I understand it, usually weddings are held in fancy hotels with fancy food. Our food was.. um, um… the same food that is at every event on Zamami. But something terrible happened yesterday that no doubt drastically affected some elements of the wedding: the ferries from Naha were all canceled due to high winds. I suspect they had a significant order of food and flowers coming out that were stuck in Naha.

[the groom had to come up and learn hula and sing a song with the band and do taiko, which is something he's good at]

There were two notable differences for me between this and an American wedding: (1) I paid ~$50 to attend. Everybody pays an 'entry fee' to help cover the cost of the wedding. I think it’s a great idea as it both relieves expenses from a young, poor couple and replaces wedding gifts. (2) The bride and groom didn’t do a ‘first dance’ nor did they kiss.


There was an after-party at a little karaoke place and the crowd chanted for them to kiss. She was not about to do this publicly so we had to settle for him kissing her on the cheek. One other interesting tidbit that I found out at the after-party: the bride is four months pregnant! It wasn't a secret, just not something I would pick up on.

[this is kind of an awesomely timed picture: they were lighting the candle at our table while people were pulling those little exploding streamer things]

Engrish Shirt #11

[This only qualifies as an Engrish shirt because he didn't know what it said. Otherwise, perfect English!]

A Belated Birthday Present

My good friend Erin is in the Peace Corps in South Africa. She sent me a pretty awesome birthday present on August 20, timed just right so I’d receive it 11 days later on my birthday. But it never came. A writeoff to a corrupt mail system (hers) and a huge bummer. Now I know why she was so disappointed. Exactly three months to the day I finally received the card (no apologies or explanations). Inside was the infamous Horsie card, which my mom gave me on my birthday a few years back. I regifted it to Erin two years ago and she reregifted it back this year. Along with 5 billion dollars. Yes, 5 billion. From Zimbabwe. They expire on December 31st. The horsie card and 5 billion dollars: this is the best November birthday of my life.

Running Log 11/17-30

This week was off! That’s the present I get for running a marathon last week.

Now begins the second phase of winter training: the Okinawa City Marathon on February 22nd. Although I am going to Tokyo this year, Okinawa City is my primary focus. The first goal is to beat last year’s time (3:21) and my second goal is a 3:10. That’s a lot to ask and I am more aware of the challenge after putting forth a semi-heroic effort in last week’s 3:39. Cutting a half-hour is only possible on paper right now. I can’t envision how it will happen, but I trust there is a way (other people do it, right?). It’s not as simple as just running faster. There need to be some tweaks to my training plan that I don’t want to guess at so I’ll be doing some research and asking better runners than me for advice. Only 13 weeks to go! (I figure I’m in about the same place I was a year ago at this time, when I ran the Naha Marathon 3 weeks later and 5 minutes faster than last week’s marathon.)

Where Do I Get My Food?

I have three sources: our smallish store on Zamami, ordering from Naha, and going to Naha. I also grow or make a significant portion of my food.

For most things, I order them from a Naha store called the Co-op. I think this is more a name than a store model that resembles what we Westerners know as cooperatives. It's a real supermarket in Naha that distributes a weekly catalog to people living on the islands. Every Thursday I go online and submit my item numbers and quantities, get the order confirmation, then get that food the next Thursday. A generous woman I work with at the Board of Education picks up the food from the ferry at noon and brings it back to the BoE, where I get it after school.

[the catalog is about 30 pages long]

The Co-op prices are usually in between what I would pay at Zamami's store and Naha, plus I pay a 2% delivery charge (but that sneaky Co-op charges more in the catalog than in their store for the same products!). For all items that are similarly priced, I buy from the Zamami store to support them. There are a select few items that I buy in Naha when I'm there (olive oil, honey, tea).

[$88 worth of groceries]

I placed my order two weeks ago and was surprised last week when I went to get the food but nothing was there. Apparently the order didn't go through. But yesterday, I found out it did go through. After the deadline. Somehow I just missed it. Which meant that this past week I had two orders in - one intentional and one unintentional. So all those order numbers from the previous week's late order bought me $44 worth of surprise groceries. I ended up with tons of tomatoes, tiny orders of onions, 5 bags of tempura batter (instead of flour), fancy little cheeses, individual yogurt (I would never buy this because of all the packaging), mayonnaise, and two refrigerated items that I couldn't identify. I gave them away. It all made for a good laugh.

One interesting note is that when I enter in my numbers there is a confirmation screen where I can see what I have ordered, but most things are written in kanji I don't know. So if I could read kanji I could've prevented this, but... this is the joy of living in a foreign country!

Meaghan Pimsler, Licensed Kickboxer

[Sorry the pictures aren't great - the lighting and ring ropes made exposure and focus difficult.]

On Sunday my friend Vaughn and I decided to finish off the best weekend of the fall term by attending our other JET friend’s kickboxing fight. Meaghan had martial arts experience prior to coming to Okinawa, but joined a gym here a few months back. She had her first fight in September and, after watching the video of her knockout, I was really intrigued and hoped to attend the next match.

Vaughn and I fortunately arrived at the somewhat sketchy facility just after the doors opened. We got great general admission seats and sat through all sorts of interesting fights, saving our cheering for Meaghan, whose fight was the last before the Double Main Event (which was freakin’ awesome). Two-thirds of the crowd was military and they really got behind the white guy in each of the fights (they all happened to be American vs. Japanese). But they really got behind Meaghan.

[Meaghan was around 150lbs. a year ago; she had to get down to 114 for this fight]

Meaghan appeared to be winning, but, short of a knockout, neither Vaughn nor I know much about how fights are judged. At the end, the announcer read two of the three judges’ scores and Meaghan took them both, giving her the win.

[the extent of Meaghan's post-fight celebration]

I haven’t gotten the details from her since the fight, but she told me last Thursday that if she won she would get her professional Japanese kickboxing license (there were apparently people in the crowd who came down from the mainland to observe her for this). The next step would be to have the organizing body fly a mainland fighter down to take her on in Okinawa and if she won that fight, she would then get flown to the mainland for fights. And of course she would be getting paid for all of this. How cool!

[how would you like your daughter to bring home either of these two guys? (the one on the left was a world champion from 2000-2004 in his category.)]

Running Log 11/10-11/16

11/10 off
11/11 5:23am 13k 1:08.15
11/12 5:32am 11k 1:00.08
11/13 6:13am 6k 40.39.8
11/14 7:00am 4k 25.00.0
11/15 3:00pm 42.195km 3:39.32

Here are the watch statistics for the marathon:

heart rate average: 171
range: 71-189

time spent above 160bpm: 3:32
time spent below 140bpm: 4.50

ascent/descent: 680’
high: 138’
low: 49’