Wedding, work, and out

This morning I headed to Dai Shiba shrine in Hamamatsucho for my friend Ryu's wedding. There are a lot of rules associated with weddings here in Japan. Typical dress for guys attending the wedding is a suit with a white tie. When you write a card you are supposed to buy a special card with a string wrapped around it that has a knot that is hard to untie symbolizing a lasting relationship. On the card it self you should not use a regular pen because the thin ink doesn't look as strong so it's recommended that you use a felt tip ink pen. Typically guests give $300 or more as a gift. The money should always be new bills symbolizing a new relationship and the amount should always be odd so it can't be easily divided also in support of a lasting relationship. By western standards $300 may seem like a lot of money but a large part of that goes toward paying for the wedding and also the guests typically receive a gift for coming as well.

Anyhow, after the ceremony everyone took a taxi to Gonpachi which is a famous restaurant where George Bush ate with the former Prime Minister of Japan and other famous people have dined. The food was great and Ryu and his wife changed into more a suit and Kimono respectively and then later the wife changed into a western style wedding dress. It was a lot of fun and it was great to meet the families. Ryu also dressed up as a sushi chef and served sushi to the guests.

Another cool thing with Japanese weddings is that there is usually a slide show with a history of each person telling what they did through out their lives and explaining how they met.
After the wedding I headed to work in Yoga for a meeting and then to Shinjuku where I met up with Momoko for dinner.