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One interesting area of life in Japan is
weddings, and Japanese really take the subject of getting
married seriously. One of my first instances of culture shock in
Japan happened when I was riding my mountain bike (foreigners
always ride mountains bikes here) and came across a sprawling
palace that looked like it had fallen out of a time warp from
Czarist Russia. Turns out it was a wedding hall, a giant
facility created solely for marriage ceremonies and receptions,
which are quite common in all corners of Japan. In our
prefecture, various companies compete ferociously to capture the
largest share of the local wedding market, coming up with
interesting themes such as Georgia House, which recreates an
Antebellum plantation house from the American South; Lockhart
Castle, an authentic castle that was imported from Scotland; and
Sharon Gospel Church, a U.S. style Baptist church in
Japan.
Japanese weddings are divided into the
ceremony ("shiki") and the reception (invariably
called a "wedding party"). The ceremony is usually
either Western style, often with a gaijin minister reading the
vows in heavily accented Japanese, or a traditional Shinto
wedding with kimonos and ceremonial sake. The reception is
usually a two-hour affair, which begins with a speech by the
groom's boss and features speeches, karaoke or other
performances by friends of both bride and groom. During the
party, the happy couple disappear to change clothes several
times, reappearing to show off new kimonos or beautiful wedding
dresses, a custom called "iro-naoshi" (ee-ROH na-OH-shi,
"fixing the colors"). In Star Wars Episode I, Queen
Amidala has a new outfit for most every scene, which is clearly
taken from this Japanese tradition. A Japanese wedding will
always end with the tearful bride reading a letter to her
parents, thanking them for raising her, apologizing for being so
selfish, and promising to be happy with her new husband ("shiawase
ni narimasu").
Has a Japanese person ever told you are
"good head"? If so, it's a complement, although it
might not sound like one. In Japanese, the phrase for
"smart" (intelligent) is "good head" ("atama
ga ii"), which sometimes gets carried over into English by
Japanese still learning the language. The English word
"smart" ("sumaato") is used in Japanese to
mean slender, well proportioned (as in, "That girl is very
smart and stylish"). If someone says you have a bad head
("atama ga warui"), they're saying that you're stupid,
the same meaning as that ubiquitous Japanese insult, "baka."
Some other phrases that make use of the word head include "atama
ga katai" (hard-headed, stubborn), "atama ga yawarakai"
("head is soft" which means someone who is flexible
and open-minded), and "atama ga furui" ("head is
old," i.e. someone whose thinking is old-fashioned).
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