Getting married in Japan (2016)

I am Irish and this is my experience of getting married to a Japanese woman in Japan. When I searched the Internet for info, I couldn't find any, so I thought I'd share my experience. I hadn't previously entered into a marriage (which would require different paperwork that what's in this post).

On February 23rd, 2016 we went to our local village hall in Akita Prefecture to ask what documents we'd need to get married. They were not used to foreigners getting married, so they looked it up and a day later we were told that we'd need:

Certificate of Freedom to Marry

My fiancée's koseki

Completed marriage form (婚姻届) with 2 witnesses signatures

Form to change name (外国人との婚姻による氏の変更届). As a foreigner there are 3 options; neither person changes their surname, the bride takes the husband's surname, or the the groom takes the wife's surname.

Certificate of Freedom to Marry (aka. Certificat de Coutume)
This is the most time consuming document to obtain.

Visit the Embassy of Ireland in Japan's webpage and complete the online questionnaire, known as the MP1 form. You'll need both your passports, and your long form birth certificate at hand. You also need to write the date you intend to marry. Save the pdf file when completed, and print off the form. This form has you application number on it.

After you complete the MP1 form you will be instructed to download and print the MP2A form. This has 2 pages. You will complete the first page with your names, addresses, date of births, and your name as it appears on your birth certificate (my passport doesn't have my middle name, but my birth certificate does).

MP2A - page 1

MP2A - page 2

The second page of the MP2A indicates that it should be completed by a notary public (公証人), a commissioner for oaths (公証人), a solicitor (事務弁護士), or a diplomat (外交官). The reason for going to such a person is to have them prove that you are who you say you are. I went to a notary public in Noshiro, Akita, as recommended by a lady from the Irish Embassy in Tokyo. There are notary publics all around Japan. The guy I went to asked that I fax him the forms with a translation before I went to him. So I asked the Irish Embassy for a translation. Strangely, they didn't have a translation of the current form but gave me a translation of an older version, which is quite different.

Old MP2A - page 1 - Japanese

Old MP2A - page 2 - Japanese

Understandably, the notary public refused to sign my MP2A form because he doesn't speak English and didn't know what the form said. Instead he gave me his own form in Japanese, and a translation in English (an English translation is required). This was perfectly acceptable (and expected) by the embassy. The form cost ¥11,000 and the translation was ¥6,000. So a total of ¥17,000 (about €140). After speaking with the Embassy they told me it is normal that notary publics use their own forms, not the MP2A! However if I was able to go to the embassy, with an appointment, the cost would have only been ¥5,700 (about €45).

Letter from notary public

notary public letter translation

Submitting my application
I enclosed the signed MP1 form, with the 1st page of the MP2A form, the 2 notary public forms, and my original long form birth certificate (on the back of your birth certificate you must write the capital letter "A" and sign your name) in an envelope with €9,100 (¥8,600 for the cert and ¥500 for return postage). This envelope was sent to the embassy via cash registered mail (現金書留; genkin kakitome). I also included a note stating that the date I wished to get married was March 16, and asked that my application be processed in time. I posted it on February 29. On March 13 I received the Certificate of Freedom to Marry. I now needed to translate it for the village hall who told me that it didn't need to be an official translation.

Certificate of Freedom to Marry

Below is my translation. I know it's not perfect, but it was accepted by the village hall. I included the English too, as there are 5 different languages (unfortunately no Japanese!) on the cert. If you have any suggestions to make it better, please leave a comment below: ===================================

The Embassy of Ireland certifies, according to documents produced to it and according to a solemn declaration made by this person, an Irish citizen, in accordance with the procedure prescribed by Irish law,

Surname:   Cunningham  
Forenames:  Owen
Born:    _______
Passport:   xx1234567
Address:   _______

that this person is not bound by the ties of a valid marriage or civil partnership under the laws of Ireland, and is therefore free to contract a marriage or civil partnership.

Date: 8 March 2016
___________
Authorised person

This document is valid for 120 days from date of issue.

===================================

アイルランド大使館は、同大使館に対して提出された文書に基づき、厳粛な宣言に従い、アイルランドの法律の下に規定されている手順を使用し、

氏:　   カニングハム　
名:　   オーエン
生年月日:   西暦19xx年xx月xx日
パスポート番号:   xx1234567
住所:   秋田県xxxxxxxxxxx

同人がアイルランドの法律の規定することに従い、証拠を付して行なった申告に基づき、アイルランドの法律による有効な婚姻及びシビル・パートナーシップ（法的に承認されたパートナーシップ関係）の存在によって拘束されるものではなく、
適法の婚姻を結び得るものであることを証明する。

日付:　　2016年3月8日
___________
参事官

この資料は発行日から120日間有効です。

===================================

On March 16, we brought our completed marriage form (example), the Certificate of Freedom to Marry, and the change of name form, similar to this. There was no charge. The lady checked our forms, accepted them, and said congratulations.

We are now officially married!

Hokkaido

On the 9th February a group of us headed to the northern island of Hokkaido. After about 20 hours travel, including a ferry, we arrived in the capital Sapporo. Every year they host the most famous snow festival in Japan; the Sapporo Snow Festival.


We spent 2 nights in Sapporo before heading to Niseko, the most famous ski resort in Japan. Niseko is popular because of its size and mainly because of the powder snow!


We rented a house there for 3 days. We spent our days snowboarding in the best snow I have ever been on. And we spent our evenings in onsens and checking out the local area. We went to an ice bar, where everything was made from ice; the walls, the bar, even the glasses!

This is a video that Todd put together from our trip!

Shizukuishi

A friend of mine who lives in the neighbouring prefecture of Iwate asked me to organise a group of people to evaluate a doburoku tour that he wishes to offer as a service to tourists to the area. Doburoku (濁酒) is basically home make sake.

So on February 6th a group of 16 of us went to Shizukuishi. Some of us went up early and had time to visit the Snow Festival at Koiwai Farm, the largest private general farm in Japan. It was pretty impressive too. There were all sorts of snow sculptures.


This was a line of snow restaurants you could go into and have lunch!


We then went to Minshuku Nakagawa (民宿なかがわ) for our hands-on doburoku making experience! The owner Mr. Nakagawa everything he was doing in detail and my friends wife Miho translated for us. It seemed pretty easy. Steam rice, let it cool, add some stuff and keep it in a barrel with the temperature maintained between 10 and 20 degrees for about a week. After that you have a load of doburoku!

Before dinner started a few of us decided to go to an onsen. The closest one was Yukotan no Mori (ゆとかんの森). After showering and warming up in the inside bath, myself and Austin headed for the rotemburo (outside bath). We had to go out into the hall and down some stairs. I slipped going down the oddly shaped steps and bounced awkwardly and painfully down the last 3 or 4 steps. Embarrassed and bleeding I got up and tried to stop my elbow from bleeding. We continued into the onsen to meet the other 3 guys we were with and found that 2 of them had also slipped on the stairs! We compared injuries; my blood clinched the victory!

We headed back to the minshuku for a dinner of a huge variety of local mountain dishes. It was delicious. And we got to drink as much as we wanted, for 4 hours!


Then some of us put on our snowboarding gear and went outside for snow sumo!

The next morning after breakfast we realised first that one of the drivers had lost his car keys while playing snow sumo, and that another person had lost a camera. So we were all running around looking for keys and cameras, sifting through snow in all the places we remembered playing sumo - which turned out to have been many places! Eventually Austin randomly kicked a bank of snow on the side of the road, the one created by the snowploughs after clearing the roads, and the spot he kicked just so happened to be where the keys were buried in the snow! Lucky!!!

We finally left and headed to Shizukuishi Ski Resort for the day. It's a nice big ski jo with plenty of long runs, steep inclines, and plenty of black courses to enjoy!

Winter Holidays

In Japan, Christmas day is not a national holiday. Many of the foreigners here take holidays and travel. That's what I did last year when I went to Taiwan. But this year I decided to stay in Honjo.

On Christmas Eve, Chika an myself went out for a romantic dinner at a local Indonesian restaurant. And then headed to a darts bar where we were given "Christmas" Cheese cake and hot sake from the staff. Later we were given the more traditional strawberry and cream style "Christmas" cake from random customers drinking in the bar.


Christmas day was a Friday, and it just happened to be the last day of school before before winter holidays. And after a normal day at school, all the teachers had an end of year drinking party that night. The party started at 5:30 and we had a 4 hour all-you-can-drink and more food than we could possible eat!

I brought along a small Christmas cake that my mother sent me (thanks Mam!), and we gave it to the staff at the izakaya, where the party was, to cut up for us. This is how my tiny slice was beautifully presented to me; on a long plate with icing sugar sprinkled like snow, Santa sitting in some cream, with his footprints precisely marked into the "snow" and a random thing on top of the cake (I can't remember what that was...).


After our 4 hour drinking time expired, we headed off to our second party, where we all got boob shaped chocolate on our tables. It was a karaoke bar that had, for some reason unknown to me, garments and wigs that you could dress up in before you got on stage to sing! And as our group was pretty drunk at this stage two teachers were more than happy to dress up!


The previous week I had dressed up as Santa for a kids party and as a thank you from the organiser I got a smoked turkey leg. So on St. Stephen's Day I cooked myself up as best a Christmas dinner as I could! For some reason the turkey looked and tasted like ham, so it was kindof like having turkey and ham?!


On January 2nd Patrice, a girl I shared a house with in Limerick for a few years, came to visit on her way home from Australia. I always love when people from Ireland come to visit! It's nice to hear stories about home and be able to speak about stuff that only Irish people are familiar with; the latest Gift Grub etc.

We travelled around a bit while she was here. We visited the local sights Yurihonjo has to offer; the jizo's, the buddha. Chika joined us when we travelled to the neighbouring prefecture to visit the sand onsen and a cave onsen; anayukko (穴ゆっこ).


We went to Zao in Yamagata for 3 days. We went snowboarding in Zao Liza World and rode the Zao rope-way though the weather was very bad for both. We also visited one of the best nicest onsens I've ever been to; shinzaemon onsen (新左衛門の湯).


Two days after Patrice left I went to Tazawako Ski Jo for the weekend with two other guys from Akita. The weather was good though visibility of the lake was minimal.

Fun times!

Tororo

On Sunday 1st October, as part of the local townspeople festival, there was a tororo eating competition. This competition has taken place every year in Ouchi for the last 26 years.

第26回 元祖とろろめし大喰い大会
Dai 26 kai Ganso Tororo meshi Oogui Taikai


Each bowl is carefully measured out to have 120g of white rice with 90cc of tororo on top. We were given a set of chopsticks, two umeboshi and a napkin. And we had 15 minutes to eat as many bowls as we could. Drinking was not allowed.

I was informed many times that participants got to keep the bowls that they eat from. And that each bowl is worth 300 yen, so I should at least eat 4 bowls to come out on top after paying the 1,000 yen entry fee!

The night before had been the Halloween party in the city, so I wasn't feeling my best for the competition. And unfortunately for me both the presenter of the competition and the local TV camera guy decided to try talk to me. I was struggling a lot with forming English sentences that morning, never mind Japanese sentences!


There were 29 participants in the competition. I managed to eat a mouthful short of 6 bowls when the final whistle blew. I tried really hard to finish the last bowl, but I physically couldn't.

The winner of the competition ate 15 bowls! One bowl every minute! When he was walking up to get presented he was walking with an understandable discomfort. The female winner ate 12 bowls. And as you can see she not exactly the biggest of women either.


This last photo appeared in a local Yurihonjo magazine called Shiseidayori　(市政便り) or Koho Yurihonjo (広報ゆりほんじょう).

Halloween Party

Every year in Akita city we have a Halloween Dance Party and the proceeds go to Room to Read. This year we had a bigger turnout; due to relocating to a better venue and possible the fact that Halloween fell on a Saturday night this year.

I'm not a huge fan of getting dressed up for events. The first year I was here my costume was a Kilkenny hurling supporter; simply because I had a Kilkenny jersey and a crazy Kilkenny hat. Last year I borrowed a costume of an anime character who plays tennis - I have no idea of his name! So this year I decided to put at least a small amount of effort into my costume.

Shortly after arriving in Japan, about 2 years ago, a young student told me I looked like Lupin III; a great anime thief. So I decided to go with that look this year. Lupan III's trademark look is a red jacket with a yellow tie. And although the tie was not an issue to acquire the red jacket was. Luckily I found a Lupan III set in a local store.


I was happy with how it looked.


Me with Queen Chika.

Akita CC vs Sendai CC

On October 18th Akita Cricket Team took on Sendai Cricket Team in Sendai. We played two games. Sendai clenched the first game by a single point. But Akita came back strong in the slightly longer second game to claim victory.

The following report was written by our team captain; Tapojoy Mandal.

A mere run separated us from Sendai in the first game, played over 10 overs. The highlights when bowling included a spectacular tumbling catch by Julie, who, by allowing the ball to bounce off her arms, shoulders and hands before she finally grabbed it with a face-forward dive, outdid David Thompson's similar effort (he only let it bounce once and so wasn't as spectacular). The catch gave Wil a wicket in his debut over. Julie followed that up with a wicket in her first-ever over as well, while Abby dismissed their wicket-keeper again. When batting, Paul played a spectacular debut innings - before being forced to retire on 22, he had spanked the ball all over the ground, losing the ball at least twice. Owen matched him with a good innings at the top of the order, but with both retired, the job to take us over the line, at the required rate of a run a ball, fell to debutants Robin and Todd. Very tight bowling by an experienced Sendai bowler made the task very difficult. It came down to us needing 2 runs to win off the last ball, and although Robin made a brave dive and looked to have made his crease, he was declared run out and we were denied even a tie.

Much as that loss irritated us, we now knew we had to cut out the small mistakes in the field. The next game was a longer, 12-over contest, and we bowled and fielded brilliantly to restrict Sendai to a paltry 67 runs. We had the harder job of bowling and fielding in pouring rain, but Robin and Todd picked up their maiden wickets, and Julie and both Davids chipped in with important breakthroughs. Owen showed Sendai that wicketkeeping gloves were for sissys, with two stumpings and a catch with his bare hands. Tapo got into the act with the final two balls of the innings, getting two bowleds including the opposition captain for a golden duck (out without scoring first ball), completing 3 overs conceding only 6 runs. The fielding was effective throughout, with Austin and Julie particularly sharp.

The rain receded but Akita's ballistic batting made Sendai wish it was still raining so that they could go home. Although Austin's foray as an opener ended with the first ball, he ran bravely for Wil, who had managed to tweak a muscle within a few minutes of taking the field. Wil followed Paul's lead in playing a debut innings of bravado, although he often forgot he had a runner and would set off at a hobble every time he connected. After he was dismissed for 23, we had a brief hiccup with some quick wickets, including Tapo when his foot brushed the base of the stumps and a bail dropped - quite unfortunate, considering in real cricket there is no base that sticks out half a foot either side - but then we unleashed Owen and he all but finished things off with a manic 25, retiring with just a run to get. Cue Abby to be in the middle during the winning moment as she has often done before, although it was left to Julie to clout the winning run. We had beaten them comfortably with several balls to spare and shown that the first game was just an aberration.

Kiritampo Party

The nurse at one of my schools is a member of LABO and every year they have a kiritampo party at Sanbouen (三望苑) in Honjo. I went last year for the first time, and she invited me again this year.

This year 6 of the local ALTs joined the party; Paul, Austin, Abby, Todd, Jimmy and myself. When we arrived the barbeques were were already cooking sweet potatoes. We were all handed beers and told to enjoy ourselves!

Kiritampo is mashed up rice that is moulded onto sticks and then cooked over a BBQ. We helped out mashing the rice and forming it onto the sticks.


We didn't get to help out with the cooking of them, but did get given more beer and various salads. And when the kiritampo was cooked we were served kiritampo nabe; a soup with various vegetables and of course the kiritampo.

After eating we went to the park area and set up two slacklines, a kind-of not-so-tight tightrope. Most of us are still learning how to balance/walk on the line. I can balance pretty well, until I try to take a step forward. Its a whole lot of fun though, and easier than you might imagine.


We got to see an amazing sunset just before we left too!

Rice

Today I was at Shimokawa elementary school (下川小学校). During a free period before lunch the principal asked me if I wanted to join the 5th grade students harvesting rice. Every year the kids get the opportunity to plant a field of rice and then help harvest it.

I was delighted to get the opportunity to try it out!


A kamada or sickle (鎌田).


A small inekariki (稲刈り機) or rice combine harvester.


We stacked the rice at the edge of the field.


I spoke to a little old Japanese woman who was working there. She explained the entire rice reaping process to me. But unfortunately about 98% of what she said to me went right over my head. One thing I did pick up on though was that the field we were working in would have a yield of about 240 kilograms; about a years supply of rice for 7 or 8 people.

Yakeyama

The day after Honjo Festival myself and Paul decided to head north to hike a mountain range near Hachimantai (八幡平) in Noshiro. We planned on hiking for 3 days but due to bad weather and multiple bear warnings we cut it back to a short hike up Mt. Yake (焼山) and back.

Yakeyama translates roughly to burning mountain. And we quickly realised why, shortly after we arrived. On one side of the mountain is Tamagawa Onsen (玉川温泉), a very famous onsen because it has the highest acidic water in Japan (pH 1.1). And close to the onsen much volcanic activity can be observed like boiling steam and sulphuric gasses gushing from the rocks.


Many people bring mats and lay down on the ground, as it is believed that the area contains a significant amount of radioactive radium which is believed to cure many different ailments.


We continued up the mountain where at the top we found a crater lake full of white liquid! Gasses from under the liquid gave the impression that the water was actually boiling!



The summit, 1324m.


That evening we went to Tamagawa Onsen. They had many different baths with varying levels of acidity. I tried most of them, but the highly acidic ones were not very comfortable on sensitive areas of the body.

The next morning we went to the far side of the mountain to the more anally friendly Goshōgake Onsen (後生掛温泉).

Honjo Festival

The two Japanese guys who were on our rowing team this year live in the same area as me in Honjo. They invited me and my friends to take part in the local Ōnomichi chōnai (大の道町内) festival on 20 September. We practiced twice at my local community centre (大の道公民館), which I just discovered existed!

We were practicing a simple enough beat on the taiko (太鼓). We needed to have 2 drummers at any given time, one rhythm and the other on main beat. There were also a group of fue (笛) players. And everyone shouts out the word sore (それ）, multiple times!


On our second night of practice, the day before the festival, we had plenty of free food and drinks given to us. We ate what has now become usual to us; yakitori, yakisoba and okonomiyaki. And we drank sake from square wooden cups!

And after a late night we got up and returned to the community centre for 8am the next morning for the opening ceremony of the festival. And it's customary to open any good ceremony with a shot of sake; so that was when our started drinking!

We were the first group to lead the drumming. Basically the group tours around the local area. People watch from the side of the street, and random people come out of their houses and give large bottles of sake to us! Some people even give out envelopes with money inside!


We made our first pit stop after about 15 minutes. We stopped outside a house and were ushered into an open garage. In the centre of the garage was a table with onigiris, pickled vegetables, miscellaneous meats and large bottles of beer and of course sake.


After indulging ourselves for about 15 to 20 minutes we were each given towels and told that we would be carrying the portable shrine, called a mikoshi (御輿, 神興 or 神輿) for a while. The towels were to pad our shoulders as the shrine was quite heavy.

When we picked it up and placed it on our shoulders it quickly became apparent that most of us foreigners were taller than the Japanese guys we were with. Some of the guys could not get their shoulders high enough to take any of the weight! Our chant also changed from sore to wasshoi (わっしょい).


We continued carrying the shrine and chanting for the rest of the day. We made regular stops at houses around Honjo. Eating and drinking without fail at each stop! Some people were even slamming large glasses of sake at 10am!!


I can't actually remember what time the festival ended (probably 5 or 6pm), but when it did we went to Yumiko's house for sushi and alcoholic refreshments. And after about two hours there we headed back to Jez's apt for bit of a party there.

It was one of the most enjoyable days I have had since I arrived in Japan!

Speech Contest 2009

Every year there is a speech contest for all the junior high schools in my area. 2 students from each school take part in the contest. One student does a recitation and the other writes their own speech. The ALTs usually coach the students with pronunciation, intonation and body language etc.

We always start practicing with the students about a month before the contest, and it's usually an enjoyable experience as we get given more responsibility than usual from the JTEs. But it also gets kindof hectic during the last two weeks.


This year one of my kids came in second place (the tall guy). And out of the 4 students I worked with he was by far the laziest. He usually didn't even show up for practice, and twice he told the teacher that he wasn't going to take part in the competition!

Regatta 2009

We had our annual rowing competition on September 13th. Unfortunately this year my team, Aburakoji Guys, had very few practices beforehand. In fact we only had one practice where we all practiced together as a team.

This year our team was made up of Kikunosuke (cox), me (stroke), Jon (3rd), Austin (2nd), and Takafumi (bow). The weather on the day of the competition wasn't the may west. It was quite windy with heavy showers at times.


In our first race there was 3 boats. We were going to go through to the next round no matter where we finished. It was really windy during the race, with the wind helping us down the river. We finished in 2nd place, posting a time of 2:01, which was actually the 3rd fastest time of the day and was a faster time the the winners of the competition last year! But of course it had a lot to do with the wind!


After an extended break, mainly due to the competition moving slower because of the weather, we were back in the boat for our second race of the day. There were 3 boats in that race too. We got off to a good start, and could clearly see that we were not going to have any problems in this race as the other boats were much slower than us. So we didn't push ourselves too hard and easily finished in 1st position.

Our next race had 4 boats and we needed to finish in the top 2 to progress to the next round. Unfortunately for us 2 of the teams in this race were very strong rowers. One had won the competition the year before, and the other had made it to the finals. So we knew we wouldn't have the luxury of taking it easy this time.

When the gun fired we started as strong as we could. But became very obvious to us that our start was our weakest point. The two good teams had great starts, and both got about a boat length of a lead within the first few seconds. We kept on their tails but never the ability to catch up to them. So we finished in 3rd place, and bowed out of the competition for another year!

Akita Mago Uta National Competition

The Akita Mago Uta National Competition (秋田馬子唄全国大会) is held in the building next to my board of education every year. And this year I was given free tickets to go. I was a bit sceptical after the Honjo Oiwake competition we had been to in August but Paul and myself decided to go check it out anyway.

The concert started in the morning but we decided not to go until the afternoon. And when we arrived I was surprised to find that the venue was quite full. We had to stand in the door, and couldn't really see the stage. I spoke to a guy from Yamaguchi ken way down south. He was just after singing in the competition. He told me that Mago uta means packhorse driver song. It is a folk song. I asked if everyone was going to sing only that one song, and sure enough they were!

The brochure we had received on the way in listed close to 200 entrants! Fair play to any judge who can listen to the same song that amount of times! We stayed for only a short while, maybe 5 or 6 entrants and left!

Yamadera

The day after my home county, Kilkenny, won their 4th consecutive All Ireland Senior Hurling Championship, a feat that has only been achieved once before in the history of hurling, I had the day off. Unfortunately I didn't get to watch the match live with fellow Irish men and women, as I'm currently the only Irish representative in the entire prefecture of Akita. So I resorted to staying at home and listening to the match on Internet radio.

I had planned to go for a drive with my friend Chika, but we hadn't decided where we would go. I met up with her at about 9:30 in the morning and she said she knew of a nice place to go, but it was a bit of a drive. Well, it just so happened that I was in the mood for driving, and the weather happened to be fantastic too!


So we headed south to a place called Yamadera, just north of Yamagata City. This is a beautiful area is home to a famous old temple called Risshaku-ji (立石寺), which dates back to 860 AD. The monks here spent their time digging holes into the mountain, which kinda resembles Swiss cheese! And there are, apparently, 1110 steps from the entrance to the complex all the way to the Oku-no-in sanctuary at the top.


Boring facts aside though, it's a really peaceful and beautiful area to visit. There are lots of small temples, jizō's, and huge trees! From the top there is a incredible view of the surrounding area.


This was a buddha that people rub for good luck!


I don't know what these were. But there were a lot of them!


It was well worth the 4 hour drive each way!