The Families Meet

The families first met the day before the wedding. Fumiko-san's parents traveled to the US a few times while she was still in school and Greg kissed butt and showed them around. Although we were eager to meet her parents back then, she said it wouldn't be appropriate to meet until she and Greg were really serious. One's first impression of "Fums" is that she's the hip, urban Tokyo gal, but when it came down to getting married, she was pretty traditional. It's no surprise now that they chose to have a traditional Kekkon Shiki at Meiji Jingu Shrine.

Our families did know one another by way of gifts exchanged when Fumiko traveled home and when Greg traveled to spend time with the her family. We were introduced to their hospitality by way of sembei, cookies, and boxes and trinkets from Japan.

Prior to our trip to Japan, Tatay would remind us to "behave ourselves" or "alright, get it out of your system" whenever a family gathering would get a little obnoxious or peppered with sarcastic jokes. For those who have broken bread with my family, you know that just about every family gathering can be raucous. Since my family, my cousin Jeff, his girlfriend Rindah, Norv and I "nihon-go ga hanashimasen" - we don't speak Japanese -- Greg and Fumiko were concerned about the families' first meeting. Greg even thought we might need some games for ice breakers. The language gap combined with our lack of table manners were Tatay's worries!

The family hosted a Kyo-kaiseki lunch at Minokichi, in a Shinjuku skyscraper. Most restaurants and stores are in these skyscraper malls - no sprawling strip malls there - everything is built up or underground with the subway stations. I easily assumed these were all office buildings.

There was plenty to talk about over lunch as we were curious to know about all the oiishi (delicious) dishes. Fumiko's dad was so handy with a great Japanese-English dictionary, that he described each dish with its English name. And it was easy to play with Fumiko-san's kawai (cute) nieces and nephews -- we learned some new words, like "sugoi!" (great!) which they blurted out when opening our gifts. Yes, we cheated. We bought the kids' love with toys.

Greg and Fumiko's worries were all for naught - lunch went on for three hours, between food, gift giving and conversation.

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