What an interesting day this has been. We left from Shin-Osaka and took the Hankyu train line into Takarazuka. It was an easy trip to the southern part of Takarazuka, and we got off the train and went right into the Takarazuka Hotel.
Why are we going to a bridal fair? Because we’re getting married someday, and likely that’ll happen in Japan. I wanted to get an idea of what a Japanese wedding is like, and so this seemed the best way to figure it out.
There are two types of weddings in Japan, a traditional Japanese style one, which is not so popular, and a Western style one, a “Christian” wedding. The only thing Christian is the reverend, but people love it. That’s the style that Kuniko wants, and I guess it’s appropriate since I’m a Western style person myself. Besides, you should see the weird outfits they wear for the traditional ceremony.
The hotel was hosting the bridal fair to drum up interest in the use of it’s facilities for the wedding. Japanese weddings are pretty expensive, and the hotel offers all kinds of different options, but in the end they want you to get married there. We weren’t expecting the full on treatment that we got, though.
There were about twenty couples, and believe it or not, I was the only foreigner there. Starting off, we had to fill out a questionnaire. I figured they’d use that information against us later, so we put in lots of fake info. One great question was, do your parents know about the wedding? Ha! We took a quick tour of the hotel, and checked out all the special rooms.
After walking around a bit, we sat down and watched a fake wedding performed by actors. They did everything that would happen in a real wedding, except that the audience were all total strangers. People clapped at all the right places, and even did a little prayer led by the foreign pastor. I thought it was funny. The gave us flower petals for the “Flower Shower”, and we sprinkled them liberally on the bride and groom as they left.
After the pseudo-ceremony we went into one of the dining halls for a “bridal fashion show”. We sat down and they poured champagne for us. The real stuff, too. I thought they’d just pour one glass and be done with it, but I went through six glasses. They brought out course after course of food, and we ate up. We dutifully took pictures of each entree – they were pretty good. We had an appetizer, a soup that had a crust baked over the top of the bowl, a big beef filet with foie gras, a mushroom platter, the hits just kept coming. It’s a testament to how good the beef dish was when I don’t have a picture of it. It looked so good we forgot all about the pictures and dove right in.
The brought in another couple of actors who went to the front of the room and each poured some kind of chemical into some glasses – when the chemicals mixed they started glowing, and then our servers came around and poured some chemicals into a special glass in the middle of our table (that I had eyed earlier thinking it might be champagne).
Then the “fashion show” began. It was quite a show, and words really fail to describe it. Luckily I took lots of pictures.
There were a few traditional type dresses, but they really leaned more towards the bizarre. The music was catwalk music and the models all did a good job of being cool and beautiful. Considering we had just eaten a gigantic free meal and I had about a bottle of champagne, we patiently sat through it and amused ourselves with some of the kooky designs.
Finally we got a chance to get out of there. We couldn’t believe that the whole thing was free, though. We’re ready to go somewhere else next weekend and have another party.
After we walked around a little more, we met up with Antoine and his girlfriend Miwako. This was Kuniko and my first time to meet Miwako, and she was really nice. We were really curious since Antoine doesn’t speak and Japanese, and she supposedly didn’t speak much English. How do they communicate? How do they make it work? Turns out Miwako doesn’t speak quite a bit of English, and Antoine did a good job of following our conversations, so apparently he’s getting good at listening to Japanese.
We all went to a restaurant near Antoine’s house that was kind of a bakery/restaurant. Lots of food here, and I was lucky to find a club sandwich on the menu. It was pretty good – chicken instead of turkey, but the best I’m liable to find around these parts.
We chatted for a long time and learned all about each other – Miwako is a student living in south Osaka, and she also works part-time. She has a great personality, lots of smiles and was very friendly. I hope that we get to hang out with them again sometime soon. She said that she’d be interested in poker night, which should make it a more exciting game. Her personality is a nice fit with Antoine’s. Both of them have a good sense of humor. With Kuniko around to translate, Antoine was able to explain to her that he often uses sarcasm, something that she hadn’t been aware of until this evening. How surreal is that?
Finally Kuniko and I headed to the station, we got on the next train. We were both exhausted from the busy day. Kuniko and I headed in different directions at Nishinomiya Kitaguchi, and I finally got home around ten p.m. On a school night, too – I’ll be really tired tomorrow.
