On Tuesday, January 12th 1999, exactly one year and one day since my girlfriend Orie and I started "going out", I got married.  I'm now the husband of Orie Hiromachi-Kitkowski (that's ten syllables!).  All my relatives wanted to hear "the story", so I figured that I'd put it up here to save money and time writing reams of letters.
I guess if I were to summarize, the story would go like this:
I went to the Embassy to get paperwork stuff, and Orie turned in the paperwork and her own paperwork to the local village office.  How romantic!
 

OK, the real story begins about a year and a half ago.  After I arrived in Japan, and some major culture shock started to set it, I received a letter from this Orie chick.  She had been to Canada, and her English was pretty good, so she decided to take it upon herself to write all the English teachers in her area, telling them if they want to hang out that she's around, or if they need help with anything to just call her- in that time she spent in Canada one of the things that she learned was that it can be a real pain to be in another country and just have no clue what's going on, or to have problems with no one to rely on.  Nifty letter, written in both Japanese and English.  I still have it around here, and I could scan it and put it on this homepage if I thought that anyone would have more than a mosquito-sized interest in reading it.

One of the things that I noticed about this letter was that it was written on very peculiar stationery.  That stationery was a pink/red "cherry" motif, with a bucket of cherries at the top, and a little embossed ditty about "the love of God", saying that we should all love God and thank him for the cherries, that sort of thing.  That sorta got me thinking that she might be in one of those really funky Japanese Christian cults, the kind of group that recruits the people that I seem to constantly keep running into in Tokyo- the scary people who approach you, asking (in English) if they can "Prey on you for health and happiness", go into a trance where they shake and mutter, and then ask you if you want to come to the "clubhouse" down the road (for some sort of indoctrination).  These Japanese people are the most fervently religious kind that you'd ever meet.  They're the kind of Christians that would make Thomas Aquinas say "Chill the hell out!"  However, they also happen to speak the absolute best English of any group of people in Japan, including overseas Americans.  I started asking myself questions.

Anyway, I got this letter, waited about 3 weeks or so before I finally had the time or clarity of mind to write a response, and did so.  A week later I got a call from her, and we talked for a while about all sorts of stuff, like living in another country, Japanese manga, that sort of thing.  We both happened to like the same Japanese manga called "Mugen no Jyuunin" (Resident of Infinity, or "Blade of the Immortal" in the overseas translated version)- a samurai manga that isn't really that widely popular in Japan, not to mention overseas.  In other words, it was a big pile of stinky luck that we both liked the same manga before we met.  It sounds kinda stupid now, but this trend repeats itself.

For example, it wasn't until much later that we realized this, but we both had no mother.  Also, one of her favorite books, a Japanese childrens' book entitled "The cat that lived 10,000 times", I had inadvertantly selected to translate as a personal project for a Japanese class in college, and before she read two lines I was reciting the thing to her from memory- freaked her out.  Those sorts of things.  Also, renting a video was a pain in the ass for a little while, because all the movies that we wanted to share with each other, we already had seen.  It was those little things that were kinda weird.  Made me feel infinitely lucky to have ended up teaching in this village, in this prefecture, in this particular part of Japan.  If I had submitted the application one day later or earlier, I'd probably be living quite a different lifestyle now.  Fate's a freaking bastard sometimes.

Back to the story- So over EMAIL we set up a time to go out for dinner.  She sent me a piture of herself over EMAIL (very cute) and told me about her boyfriend (doh!), and one day (November 18th) we went out to a Mexican restaraunt, one of the only 2 in Gunma (my "state").  I remember that day clearly, because it was two days after I broke up, in a very final way, with my ex of some 3 years.  I mean, I was a wreck (the previos day I was a step away from flying back to America!), and here I was keeping my fragile mind together and not trying to burst out crying in front of this nice girl who was explaining the finer points of "Mugen no Jyuunin" to me over a burrito dinner.

Anyway, we met maybe twice more before Winter Break, went to see "Mononoke Hime" with her friend at an expensive theater, hung out with her and her boyfriend at her relatives' house.  Once Winter Break rolled around, we were seeing a lot of each other, just hanging out, watching videos, talking, that sort of thing.  I didn't want to start anything with her- instead, I took all of that "Man, it would be really nice to pursue this fine human being as a romantic companion" sentimentality that would come up here and there and stick it into the "being better friends" box.  It was working great, too!  I was all full of myself, thinking, "Wow!  For the first time, I have a (beautiful) female friend who I can hang out with all the time and talk to, and there's none of that messy romance creeping in to screw things up.  I must have really made a change in my lifestyle.  I mean, if this was a year ago I would have been all over her, boyfriend or not."

I went on a break and visited Tokyo for a couple days, and came back in early January.  The next weekend I hung out with Orie the entire time, talking until 4 in the morning sometimes.  On the 11th (AM 4:00 or so) was when I found out that Orie wanted me bad, and for a while at that. So basically all that "being better friends" mentality that I had been storing up like the Bank of Zurich was funneled back into "ROMANCE" in the speed of a first kiss.  Her boyfriend, mental dead weight for the past 2 years of their relationship, was unceremoniously dumped.  Looking at this situation from an American perspective, it would appear that Andy and Orie were doomed to failure, both in some sort of "Rebound stage", but if you look at the specifics of it, it's not like that at all:
1) Orie has boyfriend that she doesn't really love, hasn't for a long time.  He's a bossy, demanding boy who's full of himself.
2) The only thing that keeps her from dumping him on his ass is habit.  Japanese are big on habit.
3) Guy 2 appears.  Orie has interest in guy 2, none in 1, and makes the sensible step... to ME!
Just wanted to clear that up.

Anyway, since that time we've pretty much lived together, been in a total "lovey" state since February.  I guess when, in the winter, we looked back upon our relationshp, it was very much like we were already married: Living together.  In love.  Not having any interest in other people.  Wanting to create a future together, do all sorts of things with each other.  Only the first of those five are requirements for a typical Japanese marrige.  I had her father's total approval- he kept bugging her in the manner typical of Japanese parents, "aren't you going to get married soon?"  She was the only girl in my life to accept everything about me, even (and especially) my bad parts (she has even since helped me to get over some of them, like sluggishness caused by boredom, by working on mental projects of self-creation with me).  And the best part was that she likes playing video games (that alone is grounds for seeking marrige)- most women in my life (all of them) saw them as something that got in the way, while Orie saw them as just another private activity, like reading a book or writing a letter.  Anyway, I realized that I was caught in the best relationship I ever had, with no chance of escape, so marriage became as natural a choice as "Calling a duck a duck".  Uh... same for her, as she says.

I forgot when it was (sometime before the summer), but my proposal went something like this- We were both watching the Usual Suspects, I was laying half under the table eating oranges or something, and I said, "Hey Orie- we're both bored sometime in the future, wanna get married?" She said sure, and that was that.  It wasn't until November or so that we decided to do it so soon.  But the more we thought about it, the more it was like, "Why the hell not?" There's a lot of little work and tax and living benefits with making it legal, but most importantly we felt that it wasn't a huge lifestyle change or anything.  And it wasn't, because, as I explained above, we were "already married".

So I went to the Embassy in early January in Tokyo and did the paperwork.  It was a slow day at the Embassy, so the Ambassador from America to Japan himself signed the papers and gave me his congratulations.  I would have shaken his hand except that we were seperated by 25 mm of bulletproof explosion-resistant plexiglass.  On the way out I saw this kid of about 10-12 years on rollerblades, jumping the stairs and sailing by out the armored checkpoint.  I had a sudden burst of patriotism- "Only in America", I thought, "do we have the freedom to allow skate punks to do tricks and jumps over important political landmarks."

Orie and I were actually trying to get our marrige paperwork in by the 11th, for two reasons:
1) It was EXACTLY one year after we "fell in love" (in Japanese "tsukiau").
2) It was the 11th year of the Heisei Dynasty.  Each dynasty in Japan lasts as long as the life of the current Emporer.  It might seem trivial, but most documents in Japan, especially in politics and some businesses, use only the Dynasty Year, and completely ignore the year that everyone in the rest of the world uses (except Ethiopia- I hear that they're 6 years off 'cause of that nutty Paul bringing the faith from Jerusalem).  So it would have been 1/11/11.  All ones.  That sounds lucky or something.  In Japan, people get married on dates like this.  Last year, on October 10th (10/10/10) I heard that the village offices were swamped with people coming in to file for marrige, including people turning in the paper at 10:10 in the morning!
Anyway, things worked out for the best.  The 12th is, according to the Japanese/buddhist calendar, the luckiest day that there is to do something like get married, filled with all sorts of good omens and luck- health, prosperity, good children, etc.  So if I get a divorce or end up with crummy kids I'm gonna find a Buddhist priest and kick his ass.

So it seemed rather sudden to everyone around us- like we had only been "dating" for a couple months and had decided on a whim to get married.  They didn't realize that we had been living together for months BEFORE we decided on a whim to get married.  I was asked by many Japanese people if Orie was pregnant.  I guess this kind of "quick marrige" is commonly a result of gynecological tests in Japan.  I was asked in the same manner that one might ask in America if they were curious as to whether I ate salad or soup for lunch.

So it's been six weeks since we've gotten married.  The only difference from six weeks ago is that we have more stuff- Orie got two owan bowls from a relative, and I got a plant and a lamp from people at work.  Oh, and as for ceremonies, we're gonna worry about them in a couple years down the road.  Right now there's enough to worry about without thinking of spending over a years' worth of salary for two such ceremonies (one in America, one in Japan), although I did work out the best plan with my best bro Drew as to how to throw the ultimate ceremony.  We're "getting married" at a water slide park (or at least VERY NEAR one).  Incidentally, this is also the plan for out funeral if we should suffer an untimely death.