Red Tape, Green Tea

Today I accompanied Drew & Alisha as they went to officially register their marriage with the town office. They had tried before but were missing some things, the They encountered a major setback when the clerk said they needed to present their birth certificates before the paperwork could be completed. Since up to that point they had been told they only needed passports, it came as a bit of a surprise. After an hour of deliberation/translation it was decided the office would double-check the requirements while Alisha and Drew would look into obtaining birth certificate copies from America. They were frustrated that the process had been halted by paperwork again, and stressed that the ceremony the following day would happen without them being officially married, but their friend Tomoko assured them that everything would be fine.

Being a small mountain village, Haruno is located more than 45 minutes away from the nearest department stores along the winding mountain roads. We made a trip to Apita, one of these stores, and barely had time for lunch before receiving a call from Tomoko. The passports were approved, and if we could return before 5pm, the necessary paperwork could be finalized. Hastening back up the mountains, we arrived at 5:10 pm. Luckily, the clerk was still present, and the documentation was successfully processed. Tomoko and I signed as witnesses, officially declaring Drew and Alisha as married.

That evening we traveled to a slightly larger department store, Jusco, so that Alisha could get a slip for the ceremony. While there, we payed 400 yen to use a puri-kura (print club) booth; a photo-booth on psychedelics. After paying, we were instructed by an energetic teenage girl's voice to choose a theme and then pose as photos were taken of us in rapid succession. After the mini-photoshoot, we rushed out to the side of the machine. We had 3 minutes to choose the photos we wanted ato keep and furiously decorate them with placeable graphics, sparkles, and words. Once our time was up, the machine thanked us and spat out a page of stickers that we cut up and shared. Pretty fun for something designed to separate teenage girls from their allowance.

Returning to Haruno that night, I also got to meet Tabidaki-sama; or Tabi-san, for short. Tabi was the Shinto priest that would be performing the ceremony. He spent some time with Drew practicing the Shinto prayer he would be saying during the ceremony. Afterwards, we sat around drinking tea while Drew and Tabi-san played their ukuleles together. Alisha and I joined in by singing horribly to the English song covers, and even worse to the Japanese ones, before heading to bed.