Sachiko and Yoshimasa's Wedding

A Japanese wedding is a strange thing indeed. It doesn't even need to be traditional to be odd.

Matt and I were invited to one of Matt's students wedding on Saturday evening. The format for the wedding was as follows:

1. Ceremony. Family and close friends.
2. Reception. Family and close friends.
3. Second Party. Basically everyone invited to 1 & 2 + couple of hundred other friends. At the Hillside Banquet, Daikanyama.
4. Third Party. The unofficial after party at Kitsune, Ebisu.

The Second Party started at 6 pm, an ungodly hour to start a function and ended at 8.30 pm, an ungodly hour to finish a function.

On arrival, we were given a lucky number and collected wines at the bar and walked into a room where we knew absolutely nobody. From there the evening got surreal.

A video was shown of Yoshimasa and Sachiko's early years, very professionally done, and considering it was the early years of two people I'd never met, was actually pretty interesting. The next hour was spent drawing lucky numbers out of a hat. If your number was called out, you went out front, picked a prize from the box of prizes and then selected a ball out of another hat. If you picked the "win" ball you won the prize, if you picked out the "Jun Ken Bon" ball, you had to play Jun Ken Bon with Sachiko. (Jun Ken Bon is the Japanese equivalent of Paper Scissors Rock and is the dominant system of choosing who goes first because the Japanese are terminally indecisive about everything). If you won Jun Ken Bon, you won. If you lost, too bad. And Sachiko was good.

Matt's number was called out and he could have picked out the tickets to New York, but no, he selected a set of Muji scales (everything at Muji is beige and so were the scales). I started to wonder why they had Muji scales as a gift but my head started to hurt.

One young man, who was well on his way to turning his blood into beer, selected the MP3 portable player, a prize more coveted than even the New York tickets. He picked out the Jun Ken Bon ball and lost to Sachiko's great skill. Feeling sorry for the guy, they let him play for a second time. Loss. Third time. Loss. At this point, his attachment to the MP3 player reduced the poor guy to dropping to the ground and laying out a few push-ups. Sachiko was not swayed. Game over. MP3 was up for grabs once more...

After the prize pickings, a friend of Sachiko's brother, who just happened to be a drag queen came in to give baritone speeches and sing "Somewhere over the Rainbow", complete with microphone feedback and roars of laughter.

The best part though, was undoubtedly seeing Sachiko (who, as I've mentioned, I have never met) so happy she was close to tears.

It's a chick thing.