Japanese wedding and diplomatic incidents

Hi people! 

Remember my last post about having troubles with the Japanese language? Another thing I didn't mention is that, when you learn vocabulary at the same time, you might end up muddling up words. As I arrived I learned a list of polite things to say while having a conversation with your potential Japanese mother-in-law. Things such as 'lovely day, isn't it?', 'happy birthday!', 'congratulations!' or even 'good luck!'. 

With time, I lost faith in finding a potential Japanese mother-in-law so I forgot most of the expressions, but two expressions made their way to my brain and stayed there: おめでとう　(pronounced omédéto) and　がんばって (pronounced ganbaté). Until a few hours ago, I kept forgetting which is which. One means 'congratulations!' and the other 'hang in there!' (bon courage). As from today, I will never ever forget.

Because today, I avoided a major diplomatic crisis and also realised that shuting up is sometimes a good thing. Let me explain: I was walking around and avoiding some university assignments, and ended up in a Shrine. Today being Sunday, there were a few Japanese newly weds that were either also avoiding university assignments and walking around, or were doing some photoshooting session. 

Since I am very interested in other cultures and in ways life-changing social events, such as weddings, are traditionally performed in foreign countries, I wanted to take a picture of the couple. (Kidding: I just thought they looked weird)

Being the polite and respectful person that I am (who's laughing?), I first asked if it was ok - the man said something that could have meant 'this is not a freak show, go to hell' but since he was smiling I assumed it meant 'please do, we don't mind'. It did mean option number 2, don't worry. So I went on and took this picture: 

By the way, since when do Japanese people have children before getting married?!

In order to show my gratitude and my deference to them (and prove to Japanese people that not all 外人 (foreigners) are disrespectful morons (which we are, by the way), I thought about saying something nice, like 'congratulations!'. But, and this will be known as the moment where, exactly like Daladier and Chamberlain did back in 1938, I avoided another World War. Because I didn't say anything.

Remember how this post started? About me muddling up expressions? If I had spoken up, I would have smiled softly, bowed slightly, and would have looked both the wife and the husband deeply in the eyes, and said 'hang in there!'. On a Richter skala of weird things to say to newly weds, this might just hit rank n°1. 

So from now on, I will think twice before saying something. And will develop a new technique to learn vocabulary.