International Marriage
International Marriage
Love Halfway Around the World
Louise & Haru
Louise was first introduced to Haru in the mid 1990’s when she was teaching English in a private language school in Melbourne, Australia. He was a student at her school although in the beginning she was unaware of the fact. The first stirrings she felt for him happened one night when she went out with some students socially for drin ks at a local pub.
Haru had had his eye on her unbeknownst to Louise. At the pub there was a competition and Haru won. His ‘prize’ was being forced to sing karaoke in front of everyone, something in English that is a challenge even for native English speakers, let alone a student of English who had at that time only newly touched down upon Australian soil.
Haru bravely took the challenge although for most of the song he was ‘humming unaware entirely of the lyrics.’ This charming attempt at a Beatle’s number got Louise’s attention, and his valiant effort impressed her.
It was after this that she learned he was a student at her school, although luckily he had never really been her student, so her professionalism remained intact! They began dating soon after although as Louise quips ‘at the time it wasn’t easy due to his lack of English and my equal lack of Japanese.’ They had several dates joined by a third-wheel – an electronic dictionary, which was indispensable at this time.
Soon after, Louise was planning to move to Canada to live in and study French. So she broke things off with Haru not thinking it was viable, and not wanting to do the cliche long distance thing. However, afterwards unexpectedly she moved to Japan as she had been offered a lucrative teaching position and it was half way around the world that their romance was rekindled. In 2006 Haru and Louise married in a beautiful ceremony accompanied by loved ones and friends. Louise’s family also came across from Australia to witness the event.
One of the biggest problems Louise said they face is spending quality time together. Recently she has been enjoying her work teaching English at a university in Tokyo. But Haru’s very demanding job as a hairdresser sees him often working six days a week and very long hours, and it is very rare for him to get weekends off. Just to spend time together in the past when they were both working seemingly totally opposite hours in their jobs, would see them only getting to see each other after 10 p.m. when Haru would get home from work, and only then they would have dinner together and try to go out walking or running.
Louise at that time was the Director of Studies at another English school and had to be in the office at 9 a.m.; this not being so conducive to a relationship. Luckily, now that situation has changed and she keeps work hours more in tune with those of Haru.
In Haru it seems Louise has found the perfect match, and cultural differences are no barrier between her and her ‘fabulous easy going’ man. In the beginning they had difficulties communicating but with Louise now being near fluent in Japanese, those problems have pretty much abated, she can definitely hold her own even when it comes to an argument, of which luckily for Louise and Haru, there are few.
