Saturday, December 31, 2005

The Ceremony (9/14)

Usually only the groom reads the "chikai no kotoba" (oath), but we had decided that Satoko would read an English translation after me. The shrine provided us with several versions. The original in kanji (Chinese characters) had furigana (pronunciation characters) alongside because even native Japanese might not know some of the old kanji used.

There was a romaji (roman alphabet) transliteration - but reading Japanese written in romaji is actually harder for me than reading hiragana (phonetic script). So hiragana it was, though I still made a couple of mistakes. Satoko did well with the English version - tweaked from the flawed translation they had given us.

2 comments:

puddle titan said...

Dude!! Look out . . !!

. . . it appears a giant Pac-man is attempting to consume your wife's head . . .

:)

sicklittlemonkey said...

What a fertile imagination you have!

Not shown in this picture is the attendant who helped Satoko around with her Kimono. You know - sitting down, standing up, walking - just a few things!

Bloody uncomfortable.

(Actually, said attendant is on the right, two photos up - 11/14 - in the pink yukata.)