International Marriage
International Marriage
Their Love Departed from UK, Stopped Over in America and Arrived in Japan
Julia & Masaki
They say schooldays love rarely lasts, however this couple's romance kicked off in college, has spanned three continents and 18 years, and has now touched down in Japan. Rewind to 1989 when Julia, an 18-year-old English girl, moved into a student house in the English city of Leeds. News spread, and one of the male students who heard it was Masaki, a Japanese student and wild electric
guitar playing street musician, who had lived in the same house a year earlier.
When he visited to check her out, Julia immediately thought he was absolutely gorgeous, and then, to her delight, she learned that he could cook as well! It truly was love at first sight ... Masaki took her and his room-mate for a ride around the town but it was when Masaki took them back to his flat and cooked up the most delicious pork and broccoli in oyster sauce that Julia knew she was in love.
The couple's original intention was to move to Japan in 1996, however little did they know that it was going to take them a decade before they got there. Masaki moved to the United States in 1993 to study at the Musicians' Institute in Hollywood, Los Angeles. He found a teaching job there and began running a program in which students learned how to write, record and package their music.
Two years later, Julia also decided to move to LA where she worked at various music schools teaching music, built up a business teaching music independently, and developed a program to teach music to very young children. The couple subsequently bought a house, got married and settled in and never moved to Japan as planned.
But then inertia began to set in. "After living in LA and traveling around the beautiful, staggeringly large country, we decided that America couldn't offer us what we wanted for our lives," Julia says. "It was time to move on." So, in 2006 the couple packed their bags and left America. Next stop - Japan.
The couple's difficulties have included verbal communication. "A lot of English people, very like Japanese people, do not speak directly," Julia says. "We talk around the subject or say nothing at all. We would sometimes misunderstand each other just expecting the other person to 'get it' ... forgetting we were from different cultures where the same rules of behavior did not always apply."
In contrast to the challenges, there have also been many funny moments; the strangest event being when the couple renewed their wedding vows in a ceremony presided over by "Elvis" in Las Vegas. "Seeing Masaki walk down the aisle arm-in-arm with the 'King' to the accompaniment of 'Heartbreak Hotel' was completely surreal," Julia says with a smile.
Now, Masaki is working for a guitar company and Masaki and Julia have formed an acoustic funk band called Natural Groove Inn with three other members and play mostly original music around Tokyo. Julia is also studying Japanese and says, "Right now, playing in a band together is fantastic, after all of these years."
