It’s about that time

When the husband and I were getting all of the necessary paperwork together for registering our marriage, I found myself naturally paranoid about meeting all of the requirements and constantly turning to search engines to read as much as possible beforehand. A 国際結婚 (kokusai kekkon, international marriage) in Japan may not be as rare now as it used to be, but English women marrying Japanese men is still fairly uncommon – I mean, any foreign woman marrying a Japanese man is still less common than a foreign husband and a Japanese wife. As such, I found myself either reading blogs written by American women almost ten years ago or forum posts written by American guys marrying Japanese women, and generally incubating a sense of anxiety that what I was reading was outdated and not going to be at all relevant to my own situation.

Following that, after our marriage registration I sent a long email to my two best friends overseas, giving them (as one does with best friends) absolutely all the details, and it occurred to me that a) other members of my family might possibly be interested in this, too, and b) this may potentially be vaguely useful to somebody else somewhere down the line, too. At the very least, it might be worth keeping a note of for myself when I am older and more forgetful, haha.

More to come eventually!